SolarCity 20-year lease too good to be true?

[sacsolarquest]

Yes, thanks mangoman. That sounds reasonable enough.

[Mike90250]

Thanks for the update

[mangoman]

Last summer ... yesterday it was finally turned on?! Yikes!

I know they have a long lead time, but we were thinking it would be more like 3 months, not 9. Why so long?

Anyway, thanks for your post, and I hope it works out for both of us.

We signed the lease in late August, so let's call it 6.5 months.

As for why it took so long, mostly red tape with getting inspections from the city and the power company. It took a month for So Cal Edison to come out from the time it was submitted to them.

I also did re-roof the house before the installation so the process of getting bids for that and then getting the work done was about a month as well that nothing could be done as far as installing the panels.

But I have a good roof now that won't leak etc and the folks at Solar City worked closely with the roofers and both are warranted to be free from problems for the next 20 years.

So had it not been for the re-roofing and the long delay for the SCE inspection, it would have been closer to 4 months.

[sacsolarquest]

Last summer ... yesterday it was finally turned on?! Yikes!

I know they have a long lead time, but we were thinking it would be more like 3 months, not 9. Why so long?

Anyway, thanks for your post, and I hope it works out for both of us.

[mangoman]

So we decided to do the Solar City thing last summer and yesterday was the big day and we finally got to turn it on.

I am not about saving the environment or stopping the mythical global warming etc. I am all about saving money.

I drive a hybrid car because it saves me money on gas. And with prices at $4.00/gallon in my area as of today, my car will only save me more money.

I leased solar panels from Solar City because they are supposedly going to save me money over the long run.

Today was the first full day of the panels in action and if I can believe what the inverter tells me, they generated 27.85kWh. My avg daily usage last March was 24.44kWh.

I guess that time will tell if I end up saving money in the long run. When I ran the numbers they came back with a 9.5 year return on investment doing the lease option. I plan on being in my home for much longer than that so I think I will come out ahead in this deal, much like I have on my hybrid car when compared to driving the non-hybrid version of my car which I had prior.

[Mike90250]

...

3. The product can harvest 10-20% more energy than a central inverter because a central inverter has to balance itself. If 5% of your system is affected by shade then the entire system experiences a downshift in energy harvest. however, with the enphase, if 5% of your panel array is covered, then only the affected panel is effected. The rest of the panels are operating at the prevalent conditions. Again, the monitoring system allows you to see your full panel array online, panel by panel, and see what it is producing in real time. You can see your lifetime output, weekly, daily, all accompanied by easily understood graphs to demonstrate how much energy you produced that day.

This is BS. Who in their right mind would put a solar panel in a known shady area ?

so AFIK, the micro inverters are only for sites with PROBLEMS. I'll say again,

Ability does NOT equal actual. In a clean, shadowless install, there is no advantage, with prime, binned (matched) panels.

On the same sunny roof, there is no advantage, unless you are planning to douse the array with water and start hacking with fire axes.


And come year #3, when an inverter fails, it's going to be a mess to pull a panel with crusty hardware and it's inverter.

[russ]

The 300 years is some engineer and marketing guy together and dreaming. Nothing more.

Still electrolytic capacitors? correct?

Is there a document that you can copy here or link to about the 10 to 20% more harvest. Everyone makes those claims I am afraid - all the competitors say the same thing - soon we should be reaching 1000%!

I guess the 'kicker' is the use of the word can. If a crow sits on one panel for a few minutes and craps when departing, shading a portion they can claim wonderful things.

Having said that, the microinverters certainly seem to be gaining market share.

Russ

[SolarSurfer]

HA ! does the magical inverter fairy arrive and swap the PV and the inverter out while you sleep ??



beneficial to the lease company. At the end, you have nada, except for some lower electric bills which will jump right up

I can't speak for all companies, but we monitor our systems closely. Because enphase hooks right into your internet router, we are able to log on to the monitoring system, and check each installed system daily to verify production and troubleshoot (they give a status report right when you log on of systems with issues). In the one instance we had an issue, we simply went to the home, tested the inverter, verified it was malfunctioning, and then replaced it...then left a few bucks under our clients pillow.

[SolarSurfer]

1: 15 year warranty
I thought it was 30, and their info claims 300 years. ??

2: their 100% uptime guarantee
Never saw or heard that before, how do they pay off a claim ??

3: ability to harvest 10-20% more energy
Ability does NOT equal actual. In a clean, shadowless install, there is no advantage, with prime, binned (matched) panels.

It is a 15 year warranty. The product has been tested at conditions that indicate it will last 300 years, I honestly don't know how they do this...I sell it, not manufacture it.

2. 100% uptime guarantee means that if the system fails, they pay you $.20 per kwh in lost production. If an inverter fails, due to their 3rd party monitoring system (enlighten on their website top right hand corner) they can tell how much production was lost. My gut tells me they run a sum total of what the inverters surrounding the bad inverter were producing, but again, I don't have the logistics...never had a problem with it.

3. The product can harvest 10-20% more energy than a central inverter because a central inverter has to balance itself. If 5% of your system is affected by shade then the entire system experiences a downshift in energy harvest. however, with the enphase, if 5% of your panel array is covered, then only the affected panel is effected. The rest of the panels are operating at the prevalent conditions. Again, the monitoring system allows you to see your full panel array online, panel by panel, and see what it is producing in real time. You can see your lifetime output, weekly, daily, all accompanied by easily understood graphs to demonstrate how much energy you produced that day.

[russ]

Strange thing is the 'no monthly payments' with this lease - only the upfront.

Meaning you have truly prepaid roughly 360 kWh/month of your power bill for 20 years at less than 7 cents per kWh.

I am still not big on leases and I believe the public would be better served if the government made the same financial options that companies have available to everyone.

But - hard to see a downside for Ken on this.

Still need to have a good lawyer check it out.

Russ

[sacsolarquest]

My bet is if you purchase outright with cash and take advantage of all the incentives, th eintial cost would be about the same, maybe a little more, but in the end you will have equity.

Thanks, Derek, I certainly understand your thinking. Like I said, I've never before considered leasing anything.

But as I've also said, the lease option is $6000, the buy option is $10,000 -- that isn't anywhere close to "about the same". Plus, I have to factor in replacement of at least one inverter within the 20-year period for the buy option (I used $2K or $2.5K in year 11 or 12 -- I don't recall exactly which).

It's true that at the end of 20 years, the lease option's terminal value is $0, compared to what I used for the IRR calculation of buying ($10K, I think). But even so, the return on investment for the lease was 50% better.

So it looks like we've decided to go for it, pending further review of the fine print. I'd love to say how it all turns out in the end, but honestly I doubt I'll remember 20 years from now. (Though you can bet I'll be back complaining if there are problems before that!)

Thanks for the feedback.

[Sunking]

I do appreciate your comments, but I don't think they have changed the bottom line. The lease option still seems more beneficial than an outright purchase.

You seem to be smart person, but this is not thought out. At the end of the lease you have no equity

My bet is if you purchase outright with cash and take advantage of all the incentives, th eintial cost would be about the same, maybe a little more, but in the end you will have equity.

[Mike90250]

..The Enphase technology sends an email alert that an micro-inverter is down and its fixed before you even knew there was a problem...

HA ! does the magical inverter fairy arrive and swap the PV and the inverter out while you sleep ??

I do appreciate your comments, but I don't think they have changed the bottom line. The lease option still seems more beneficial than an outright purchase.

beneficial to the lease company. At the end, you have nada, except for some lower electric bills which will jump right up

[Mike90250]

.... You really need to look into the Enphase micro-inverters, their 15 year warranty, their 100% uptime guarantee, and their ability to harvest 10-20% more energy. ...

1: 15 year warranty
I thought it was 30, and their info claims 300 years. ??

2: their 100% uptime guarantee
Never saw or heard that before, how do they pay off a claim ??

3: ability to harvest 10-20% more energy
Ability does NOT equal actual. In a clean, shadowless install, there is no advantage, with prime, binned (matched) panels.

[sacsolarquest]

I still don't understand what rate you're referring to, but apparently it's a different kind of lease.

I didn't mean that the Enphase micro-inverter was too new, I was referring to the Enecsys one. That one just began selling in the US last month.

I do appreciate your comments, but I don't think they have changed the bottom line. The lease option still seems more beneficial than an outright purchase.