SolarCity 20-year lease too good to be true?

[Mike90250]

Lucky you with the low elect bill

[mangoman]

You have what sized system? You provide no details except what a wonderful deal you got. When does Solar City give your promotion? At least you can mention system size.

They oversized your system so you have export power? No one else has reported seeing anything like that.

You would still pay a meter charge and other items - a 2$ bill - I don't think so.

Regards
Russ

Just got my bill for the month of May. $1.71. If $1.83 wasn't possible and $1.77 wasn't possible, how can it be that today's bill was $1.71?

[kpboudr]

leasing option

can you please email a copy to kb@glgusa.com. We're looking at leasing as an option

I just tried to upload my Solar City Lease to this thread. I would be interested to see what you guys think. I think it is a great deal. Problem is the PDF is over 700kb and the max file size I can attach is 78kb.

If anyone wants me to mail it to them, let me know your e-mail address.

[nate]

I explained in my 1st post how Solar City takes a cut of the Oregon State Tax Credit over the course of 4 years, and this is factored into the lower up front price. Taking this into account, the net cost of the system when paying Solar City back was $247 and my payback time was 3 years.

There is another option besides to structure the Oregon REC with Solar City. You can pay $2975 instead of $1000 on May 1st of the 1st year and be done with it. You'd be collecting $1500 of that $2975 the first year from the state, and the next 3 years just net an additional $1500 from the state. This seems like the way to go, as the net cost turns out to be negative -$778 vs. +$247. Essentially, the feds, state and utilities are paying me $778 to let Solar City put this on my roof, and it will be insured, warranted and have guaranteed production during that time.

Here's a summary, not taking into account the savings rate. This figured a 2% increase in utilities, this is something I asked about back on page 11 but didn't see a response. System installers at the NW solar expo liked to claim closer to 5% in which case I would save more.

-$2247 when system installed/turned on.

then 1st year,
-$2,975 (to Solar City, after 1 year)
+$315 (savings in energy)
+$1,500 (State Credit)
= -$3,407

2nd year,
-3,407 (from year before)
+321.30 (savings in energy)
+1500 (state credit)
= -$1,585.70

3rd year,
-1,585.70 (from year before)
+327.73 (savings in energy)
+1,500 (state credit)
= +242.03

4th year,
+242.03 (from year before)
+334.28 (savings in energy)
+$1500 (state credit)
= $2,076.31

5th year
$2,076.31 (from year before)
+340.97 (savings in energy)
= $2,417.28

Now, people can split hairs hear and say that I could be earning interest on the money paid up front. It affects the purchase option in a worse way because the payback time is MUCH quicker in this scenario vs. the purchase. Also, for the purchase I'd have to partially borrow some of the $12k+ up front price.

[Naptown]

The one thing I have not seen in this thread, is that much of the incentives that are offered, are in the form of tax credit. The credits for the Feds must be taken within five years. The lease makes sense for people that are retired and who do not have enough taxable income to take advantage of the credits. But who have stashed away enough money to pay the up front lease costs.

Ideally they would have thought of this prior to retirement when their income is higher. however the Federal Credit rolls forward for three years if the taxable income is not high enough.

[azscooter]

Tax Credit and Lease

The one thing I have not seen in this thread, is that much of the incentives that are offered, are in the form of tax credit. The credits for the Feds must be taken within five years. The lease makes sense for people that are retired and who do not have enough taxable income to take advantage of the credits. But who have stashed away enough money to pay the up front lease costs.

[Garthhh]

Somewhere in the 14 pages before this. Still I summed it up for you.

6.5 months from lease signing to turn on. With a month or 6 week delay for re-roofing the house thrown in. Other than the roofing delay, it took Edison a month to come out and inspect after the install was complete and it also took several weeks for the city inspectors. Remove those delays and we would have been looking at about 3-4 months from start to finish.

Actually you may have revealed all the particulars on another thread, but not on this one, you had mentioned the delays & a reluctance to discuss the lease

Ideally threads should stand on their own or link to relevant posts on other threads.

[mangoman]

That is good output
It was probably a day with low smog and humidity (assumption) it was a fairly cool day in the high 50's and almost 13 hours from sunrise to sunset. If you look closely at the output curve there is some difference between the morning and afternoon output curves favoring the afternoon This is caused by the west facing modules. This makes me tend to think that the two strings are tracking independently. I will need to check with Fronius about this.

Well I do live in the desert so humidity and smog are infrequent events. Blowing dust is common. I do go out and spray the panels off every week or 10 days from the blowing dirt that builds up on them, to keep them clean. I would be interested to know what you find out from Fronius. I did dig up my original site plans. Perhaps you can understand them better than I can and determine how everything is wired up. I have no skills when it comes to reading such documentation.S1.jpgS2.jpg

[nate]

As suggested, I checked out http://www.srectrade.com/contact.php and researched SREC's. This is how people in the Northeast get their money back, but in Oregon there are other programs. Attached is the email reply from SRECTRADE. So, as suspected, Solar City wasn't keeping this a secret from me -- its just not a source to repay for solar investments in Oregon. Lease and purchase options will very from state to state in large part due to how the incentive programs differ in different locations.

[Naptown]

That is good output
It was probably a day with low smog and humidity (assumption) it was a fairly cool day in the high 50's and almost 13 hours from sunrise to sunset. If you look closely at the output curve there is some difference between the morning and afternoon output curves favoring the afternoon This is caused by the west facing modules. This makes me tend to think that the two strings are tracking independently. I will need to check with Fronius about this.

[mangoman]

So you feel you got a good deal good for you If you're happy that's all that counts.That deal in Maryland would not be good but I cant speak for where you are. I assume you are in California.
The thing I am questioning however is the part in red in particular the south and west facing array's are tied into a common inverter. I Generally don't do Fronius inverters but this seems very odd to me. (Production would suffer greatly on an SMA or most string inverters. How did they make this work?

Sorry, I did not research deals in Maryland, so I do not know how it would compare but yes, I am happy. And there is no need to assume I am in California. I have stated a few times that I am in California along with posting copies of my electric bill from Southern California Edison so I would be logical to conclude that I am in fact in California and more specifically in Southern California.

So, onto the part you question. Unfortunately I do not have an answer for how they got it all to work. That is a technical question that I just don't have the expertise to answer. I wish I could answer it as I would like to know myself how it is all wired together to put out the way that it does. It doesn't seem to impact production too much though the way that it is wired up. Here is a screen shot from my monitoring application showing the output in 30 minute increments from a couple of weeks ago. Yes, this was the highest production day we have had so far. I have averaged 29.7kWh output over the 70 days that it has been running.

So here is a question for the experts out there. Assuming perfect weather conditions, if 35.5kWh on a late April day is not good output for a 5.04kWh system, what should I be seeing?

best.jpg

[Naptown]

I will answer pretty much any question that anyone has here. All they need to do is ask. So, allow me to answer yours:

What & how much equipment was installed? Well as I have mentioned before but for those too lazy to go back a few pages to find it, the system I have is a 5.04kWh system. I don't think I have mentioned specific manufacturers. So, there are 24 X 210W Kyocera KD210GX-LFBS panels. 12 are on my garage (south facing) and 12 are over the bedroom, living room and kitchen (west facing). All tie into 1 Fronius IG 5100 inverter. Also installed was a new electrical panel.

Are you satisfied with the quality of the work? Extremely. About the only thing that I was not happy with was when they came to start install, they discovered that my roof should be re-papered so they stopped. I was happy that they stopped the install but I was disappointed that this wasn't discovered during my roof assessment when they were determining if I was a good candidate for solar. Anyway, times being tough for contractors these days, I was able to get a good deal on a full roof re-papering. The roofer and Solar City worked closely together on the project. The installers were very friendly and knowledgeable and sought input from both my wife and I anytime they had questions about how we would like conduit to run or exactly where we wanted the inverter installed etc.

did you end up paying the same price you quoted in the OP? I have not been asked to pay a single penny more than the agreed price. Here again I posted my cost in another Solar City thread on this forum but here is a review:
20 year Solar City Lease
$7,180 Down
$40 X 239 Months = 9560
-$500 rebate for more than 50 homes in my community signing up

Total paid to Solar City over 20 years = $16,240
Is is a good deal compared to what others have gotten. I am sure some have gotten better and some have gotten worse. But as I have also said before, I don't stay awake at night kicking myself in the ass for spending $20,000 on a car knowing that someone walked into the same dealership the next day and got the same exact car for $18,000.

do any of the terms of the lease concern you? Not at all. If I had concerns that had not been addressed, I would not have signed up. I hope everyone reads and understands any legal documents that they sign. I read it, it made sense to me and my family that this was the way for us to go and therefore we signed up. No regrets.

were there any add on expenses, like additional homeowners insurance? Just my new roof, which also has the same 20 year warranty now as my solar system. All insurance, support and maintenance etc is covered in the cost. I did call my HO insurance just to make sure as I was a bit skeptical, and yes, everything is covered by Solar City. What if my panels are stolen? Covered. What if my roof flies off? Covered. What if a panel flies off and crashes through a neighbor's house? Covered? Yes!

Please feel free to let me know if you have additional questions.

So you feel you got a good deal good for you If you're happy that's all that counts.That deal in Maryland would not be good but I cant speak for where you are. I assume you are in California.
The thing I am questioning however is the part in red in particular the south and west facing array's are tied into a common inverter. I Generally don't do Fronius inverters but this seems very odd to me. (Production would suffer greatly on an SMA or most string inverters. How did they make this work?

[mangoman]

Thank you.
I missed the boat. I'll catch up. Where's it ?

Somewhere in the 14 pages before this. Still I summed it up for you.

6.5 months from lease signing to turn on. With a month or 6 week delay for re-roofing the house thrown in. Other than the roofing delay, it took Edison a month to come out and inspect after the install was complete and it also took several weeks for the city inspectors. Remove those delays and we would have been looking at about 3-4 months from start to finish.

[MarineLiner]

Timeline has again already been spoken

..... the timeline has again already been spoken of in another post on this forum.

Thank you.
I missed the boat. I'll catch up. Where's it ?

[mangoman]

[QUOTE=MarineLiner;24441]