Solar System for the house
- Thread starter OCReefMadness
- Start date
If you have the $ then better to buy it! leasing means you are locked in a contract with them for 20-25 years. If you sell your house then the next buyer will have to qualify credit to take over your lease which could be a bit of a hassle. If your home buyer doesn't qualify or for some reason does not want to sign on to the solar contract then you have to pay them to have it moved to your next home which will cost $$$. Also if you lease you don't get the SCE incentive rebate which is $1200 and also the 30% Federal tax credit. So depends on your income that could equate to at least $8K to 10K. Remember tax credit is real money as compared to tax deductions.
Ideally you want to go with a big enough solar system to get your SCE rate back to a tier 1 or 2 because the pricing in these tiers are federally regulated and SCE can't increase them at will. You will then have an annual bill from SCE which will probably be around $120 for the year.
Ideally you want to go with a big enough solar system to get your SCE rate back to a tier 1 or 2 because the pricing in these tiers are federally regulated and SCE can't increase them at will. You will then have an annual bill from SCE which will probably be around $120 for the year.
My system produces all the energy I need. As a matter of fact SCE is issuing me credit. The only thing I pay SCE is about $1.50. This is for their paper work. They keep track of what your system is producing every month. And they also keep track of the energy you use from SCE. The system doen't produce energy at night ( no sun ) so you use their energy ( at their lowest rates.
I talked to Matthew from Solar City...I saw a thread one of reefer posted in RC he stated he leased he pays only $119 to Solar city and SCE only $1.60. I contacted Matthew and discussed with him to see if I can lease the solar to pay exactly that reefer posted in RC. Matthew told me he doesn't have that program not to pay SCE when I lease the reefer was wrong or misunderstood...He had to pay every month $50 to SCE when he leased the Solar. He might not see every month on his bill because on the leasing contract of the Solar City, SEC will bill annually to his account (around $600 annually).
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Reason I asked is the weather is a issue. Where i'm at, the sun is usually shinning thru out the day. Not to much clouds and fog. If you are where you see alot of early morning low clouds and fog, I don't think I would go with solar.
What solar does is come out to your house, look at your roof. Its best to have your roof facing south, where it would get sun all day. 2nd they will look at you sce bill for 12 months and see how much energy you use for the year, then build you a system to match that. And will probably save you some money each month. In my case I had them add more panels then what I annually use' so I would be able to run a/c more and not have to worry about it.
What solar does is come out to your house, look at your roof. Its best to have your roof facing south, where it would get sun all day. 2nd they will look at you sce bill for 12 months and see how much energy you use for the year, then build you a system to match that. And will probably save you some money each month. In my case I had them add more panels then what I annually use' so I would be able to run a/c more and not have to worry about it.
We live in Venice and have signed a contract with Solar City - we will be having them do the install in a couple of months. We also talked with Solar Forward, Sungevity & several small local companies.
We pre-paid our lease and it was like $5700 for a ~3.5 kk systen and Solar City is paying $1800 to upgrade our electrical panel from 100amps to 200 - which is something we would be doing anyways. So in the end, our power will be taken care of for $3900. Any purchased system we looked at was MANY TIMES that price.
As for "after the lease", I asked what happens and the rep said that they can remove the system, but they will also work out low-cost ways for you to just keep it since the removed system will be worth nothing to them by then. Removing it just costs them $.
Also, right now the lifespan of inverters is 7-10yrs and they cost a few grand to replace. That alone made leasing make perfect sense for us.
Once you are signed up, SolarCity gives you $400 for every referral you give. So IM me if you are going to contact them and I will give our name!
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We pre-paid our lease and it was like $5700 for a ~3.5 kk systen and Solar City is paying $1800 to upgrade our electrical panel from 100amps to 200 - which is something we would be doing anyways. So in the end, our power will be taken care of for $3900. Any purchased system we looked at was MANY TIMES that price.
As for "after the lease", I asked what happens and the rep said that they can remove the system, but they will also work out low-cost ways for you to just keep it since the removed system will be worth nothing to them by then. Removing it just costs them $.
Also, right now the lifespan of inverters is 7-10yrs and they cost a few grand to replace. That alone made leasing make perfect sense for us.
Once you are signed up, SolarCity gives you $400 for every referral you give. So IM me if you are going to contact them and I will give our name!
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I have had a SolarCity system for 3 weeks now. The rep is Rod Bogue. I am on a power purchase agreement (PPA) which gives me the option to purchase the system later. I choose this instead of a lease or outright purchase because it's a hybrid option that keeps the budget low (no upfront expenses and a predetermined monthly amount of $90 worth of electricity) yet allows me to buy it after 5 or 10 years (option contract). I'm aware that I'll have to pay some fees to SCE monthly, but it's not as high as $50, so I don't know what that program is. The excess electricity is credited to my account only in the calendar year.
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Also, when you lease, yes - the leasing company gets the federal & utility rebates because they own the system. BUT they should be passing that on to you as a reduction in your lease rate. In our case, LADWP dropped their rebate rate between the time we first talked with them and when we signed, and SolarCity still gave us pricing based on the higher rebate amount.
We could have done the whole system with $0 down, but decided to just pay the full lease up front to get it over with because they give you a better lease price that way. Plus this way, if we decide to sell the house it's a dual selling point - no power costs AND the lease was paid up front. And let's be real.... if someone does $0 down, with the absurd price that property gets in SoCal, if someone can afford to buy a house and can qualify for a loan, I'd be SHOCKED if they didn't qualify to assume your solar lease. You don't exactly need amazing credit with these companies, and you're not talking a big amount of money.
I also am a fan of leasing because the way technology is going, something tells me in 20 years "you" will be better off getting a whole new system - currently even the best panels aren't all that efficient. Plus what I didn't mention about the inverter is that when leased, if it goes out, they replace it. Sungevity was giving 1 inverter during the lease period - openly saying we'd be responsible for buying AT LEAST one more during the lease for several thousand dollars. SolarCity will replace however many you need replaced. Plus if you buy from Mom & Pop Solar, if they go out of biz you are kind of screwed. At least with a national company you have a better chance of them lasting a while.
So to break it down, ours was $5700 up-front to pay off the lease minus the $1800 we'd be spending anyway to upgrade to 200amp = $3900 / 240mos = avg $16.25/month for all of our current level of power, which we are currently paying well more than that to LADWP.
Incidentally, the closest system to this that we found to buy was $18,000.
We could have done the whole system with $0 down, but decided to just pay the full lease up front to get it over with because they give you a better lease price that way. Plus this way, if we decide to sell the house it's a dual selling point - no power costs AND the lease was paid up front. And let's be real.... if someone does $0 down, with the absurd price that property gets in SoCal, if someone can afford to buy a house and can qualify for a loan, I'd be SHOCKED if they didn't qualify to assume your solar lease. You don't exactly need amazing credit with these companies, and you're not talking a big amount of money.
I also am a fan of leasing because the way technology is going, something tells me in 20 years "you" will be better off getting a whole new system - currently even the best panels aren't all that efficient. Plus what I didn't mention about the inverter is that when leased, if it goes out, they replace it. Sungevity was giving 1 inverter during the lease period - openly saying we'd be responsible for buying AT LEAST one more during the lease for several thousand dollars. SolarCity will replace however many you need replaced. Plus if you buy from Mom & Pop Solar, if they go out of biz you are kind of screwed. At least with a national company you have a better chance of them lasting a while.
So to break it down, ours was $5700 up-front to pay off the lease minus the $1800 we'd be spending anyway to upgrade to 200amp = $3900 / 240mos = avg $16.25/month for all of our current level of power, which we are currently paying well more than that to LADWP.
Incidentally, the closest system to this that we found to buy was $18,000.
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$90. The monthly amount is based on the average of the last 12 months of your bills. Ours is about $70, but with a 200+ gallon tank, and all future appliances to run on electricity, we decided to opt for a bigger system.
SolarCity is owned by Elon Musk, who pioneers PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX. This guy knows what he's doing.
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SolarCity is owned by Elon Musk, who pioneers PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX. This guy knows what he's doing.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk
