Solar panels on houses aren’t the win they seem to be unless one lives in a market with an unstable grid and requires self-powering. It’s nice to feel like you’re “helping” but grid-scale solar will always win. Plus the whole home solar market is a complete scammy racket now unless one can find a reputable local company.
Looked into it a while ago, oftentimes the agreement has the solar company leasing your roof space for 30+ years, and during construction they have a carte blanche permission to access any part of your house at any time. After install, you have to then seek permission through them if you want to do anything to your roof. Hail storm caused a roof leak? Well, you’ll be waiting a bit to have that taken care of. My favorite agreement was one with a California firm, you had 72 hours to cancel after signing and the only way to cancel was to telegram their California office.
They also do a piss-poor job of factoring in things like the expense of having to rewire your utility panel or the necessity of lopping off the tops of trees (which then reduces the carbon sink they were doing, and shade on the house) in the initial estimates and try to wave away the mushrooming expenses. If the company goes under and there’s not a transfer of stewardship of the generating equipment, it can arbitrarily be disabled until the homeowner finds a way to manually override or a new vendor takes over in their stead.
As someone who has solar panels on their roof, this is a bunch of BS. They paid for themselves after five years. I didn’t lease them, I paid for the system and the city, state, and feds helped to offset the costs with rebates. I didn’t have to rewire my house. Without the panels, my summer HVAC bill would be twice what I pay each month.
Solar panels on houses aren’t the win they seem to be unless one lives in a market with an unstable grid and requires self-powering. It’s nice to feel like you’re “helping” but grid-scale solar will always win. Plus the whole home solar market is a complete scammy racket now unless one can find a reputable local company.
Looked into it a while ago, oftentimes the agreement has the solar company leasing your roof space for 30+ years, and during construction they have a carte blanche permission to access any part of your house at any time. After install, you have to then seek permission through them if you want to do anything to your roof. Hail storm caused a roof leak? Well, you’ll be waiting a bit to have that taken care of. My favorite agreement was one with a California firm, you had 72 hours to cancel after signing and the only way to cancel was to telegram their California office.
They also do a piss-poor job of factoring in things like the expense of having to rewire your utility panel or the necessity of lopping off the tops of trees (which then reduces the carbon sink they were doing, and shade on the house) in the initial estimates and try to wave away the mushrooming expenses. If the company goes under and there’s not a transfer of stewardship of the generating equipment, it can arbitrarily be disabled until the homeowner finds a way to manually override or a new vendor takes over in their stead.
As someone who has solar panels on their roof, this is a bunch of BS. They paid for themselves after five years. I didn’t lease them, I paid for the system and the city, state, and feds helped to offset the costs with rebates. I didn’t have to rewire my house. Without the panels, my summer HVAC bill would be twice what I pay each month.
Depends of the solar vendor. Some do indeed have fucked up models. If I can ever afford it, I’m buying not leasing.
5 years is a tight ROI! How much was the TCO?