SolarCity 20-year lease too good to be true?

[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

How soon we forget: http://www.solarpaneltalk.com/showth...2562#post22562

And as for my sub $2 electric bills, well see below.
P1.jpgP2.jpgP3.jpg

As you can see, last month I paid $1.83 and this month $1.77. Let me know if you want me to go take a photo of my meter's current reading so you can see exactly how far behind it is from when we first turned the system on. I can assure you however that last night when I posted, it was exactly 645kWh below what it read on March 3rd which was the last meter reading we had before the system was turned on.

It's just killing you that I seem to have gotten a pretty darn good deal from Solar City, and I don't really understand why you cant just accept it.

[russ]

Here is what I paid for electricity for the past 5 years in the same months since my Solar City leased panels were turned on:

April 2007 = 109.84
April 2008 = 107.01
April 2009 = 119.86
April 2010 = 111.65
April 2011 = 1.83

May 2007 = 111.32
May 2008 = 108.62
May 2009 = 108.09
May 2010 = 105.18
May 2011 = 1.77

Plus at this exact moment in time I have 645kWh in the bank for use during the fast coming summer months. Finally I won't have to keep my thermostat at 80 during the summer. I wonder what a 72-75 degree home will feel like.

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

Believe the development

Sure,I agree with you.But It getting well in the future.

[mangoman]

Here is what I paid for electricity for the past 5 years in the same months since my Solar City leased panels were turned on:

April 2007 = 109.84
April 2008 = 107.01
April 2009 = 119.86
April 2010 = 111.65
April 2011 = 1.83

May 2007 = 111.32
May 2008 = 108.62
May 2009 = 108.09
May 2010 = 105.18
May 2011 = 1.77

Plus at this exact moment in time I have 645kWh in the bank for use during the fast coming summer months. Finally I won't have to keep my thermostat at 80 during the summer. I wonder what a 72-75 degree home will feel like.

(I used the same "cute language" as Rich so I am not sure why you would edit it out but thanks for watching out for the kiddies that might be hanging out here.)

[mikegoldnj]

Leases, at least every lease I have ever encountered through SUn Run, Sunpower, Sungevity, Verengo, Blah BLah BLah...sign you up on a 15-20 year program. From there your rate is set to go up at 2.9% per year during that time frame. I don't have much solar city experience, but thats the lease hook.

The SunRun deal we were looking at was actually a power purchase agreement with a static per KwH rate for the entire term of the agreement. The SunEdison lease we have been looking at has the monthly lease payments decreasing by 2% every year of the 20 year term AND we own the SRECs.

[JoelInCali]

"You didn't get a good deal, you were just f#%*ed gently. Trust me, (Insert leasing company name) will not be the one with the sore a#*hole tomorrow."

Well, if at the end of the 20 years I end up saving $20-25K on my $7.9K investment, without upkeep worry, and getting to keep the system after the lease is done, while all the while doing my little part to promote renewable energy ... the gentle f*&k will be well worth it to me.

The bottom line is: I paid $7.9K. That's it. No more. After 20 years, will I have gotten everything I expected to get out of that investment? I think I will.

[mikegoldnj]

Hi Ken - No, not comparing this to off grid. What I was saying is that one can not lease such as that and claim they have done a green thing as all the rights belong to company doing the leasing.

That makes no sense whatsoever. The company owning the tax credit and SRECs does not negate the 'green' value of the homeowner lowering his or her carbon footprint.

[JoelInCali]

I did read the thread....

I read the thread completely before posting. And obviously I ended up on the side of lease being better. Remember, this is a pre-paid lease. $7900 out of pocket and done. And while it is a 20-year lease, I could conceivably own these panels indefinitely assuming they don't exercise their right to come remove them. There are a lot of factors in determining whether this lease will be better than an outright purchase. Some of them being

• How long you plan to live in the house?
• How aggressive or conservative you are when it comes to investing (stock market, etc.)?
• How handy you are with respect to support, install, etc.?

I would agree that if you were paying interest on the lease (like if you went 0-down or something) then that situation is a little worse and requires more thought. But by the end of the 20 years, I am calculating a $20-25K savings than without solar and a post-tax ROI of 13-15%. That's not too bad. All profit money after 8-years is not too bad in my opinion.

Of course, no one can predict the future. This lease, though, seemed to be the best in terms of cost/benefit, risk/reward, etc.

[Naptown]

I don't know if anyone here follows a twitter account called "S*#t My dad says or watches the TV show but here is something I thought appropriate for this thread.
As posted ( edited to change expletives) on the twitter account


"You didn't get a good deal, you were just f#%*ed gently. Trust me, (Insert leasing company name) will not be the one with the sore a#*hole tomorrow."

[Naptown]

Not being snarky just being truthful
This thread is 12 pages long
Read the entire thing All the information you could ever want is there.
I personally compete against SolarCity etc
Although I cannot offer the low upfront costs they do the ROI on what we do beats them every time in the long or short haul.
I have read many lease agreements and the consumer comes out short on every one of them vs an outright purchase
Even being almost three times the up front cost the consumer will make out better.

[JoelInCali]

Why the sarcasm?

Wow such a deal
Break even at 8 years is longer than in Maryland which averages 5. And CA utility rates are higher than Maryland
Caveat Emptor

Sounds like you don't think I got a good deal. Not sure why you have to be snarky about it. Please tell us why the deal I (and maybe Ken) got is so horrible. Remember the following: cheaper isn't always better, generally no one ever gets the *best* possible deal, the 8 year break even is probably worst case, you don't know my utility rates (municipal electric rates are cheaper than something like PG&E), etc.

So you think $7900 for a 4.7KW DC system that I will have for 20 years (and very possibly as long as I want afterwards) with a break even of at the most 8 years is bad. Why?

[Naptown]

Wow such a deal
Break even at 8 years is longer than in Maryland which averages 5. And CA utility rates are higher than Maryland
Caveat Emptor

[JoelInCali]

Not looking back

Just like Ken, I did a prepaid, 20-year lease with SolarCity and I am not looking back. I thought the deal was very good. Yes, SolarCity gets all the initial government credits, but my break even point is 8 years, then everything after that is gravy. Here is the system I got...

• 4.7KW DC
• 20-year lease
• One payment out of pocket of $7900. No further payments.
• 1st year guaranteed production = 6400 kWh
• 10th year guaranteed production = 5800 kWh
• 20th year guaranteed production = 53000 kWh
• If in any year the guaranteed production is not met, I get a check equal to $0.130 per kWh x difference, with an annual per kWh increase of 4% every year.
• Break even point on my $7900 is estimated to be 8 years.
• Estimated average price per kWh over lease is $0.063
• Estimated utility company price increase is 6.0% per year
• 20-year monitoring, warranty and service.
• At the end of the lease, we can renew, upgrade or they will remove the system for free --- here is the kicker, it is highly unlikely that in 20 years it will be monetarily worth it to SolarCity to come remove 20 year old panels. So there is a good chance we just get to keep the system. We would just lose the monitoring, warranty and service.

My system is newly up and running and it is pretty cool to see the thing producing.

I really couldn't see a downside to this lease (besides not owning it outright from the get go). Maybe someone else will something that I didn't.

[nate]

Oh, I see. Thanks Russ.

My 1st quote I had from them had options to pay monthly, but it stayed the same for the length of the lease. These weren't of interest for me anyway because the $ per DC watt installed did not compare well to the pre paid lease. When I had them change the size of the system, I had them just quote the pre paid lease.

[russ]

If you take the zero down or minimum down leases there is a monthly payment that is often subject to a fixed escalation over the years.

Russ