
I Bought a House with Solar Panels - sphuff
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-sunrun-solar-panels/
======
AlphaWeaver
>One former Bay Area employee sent me a Sunrun training manual he said was
current when he resigned in April 2017. It’s called “Power Play 2.0: The Guide
to Successfully Sell Sunrun.” (The company confirmed its authenticity.) It
instructs salespeople to sow distrust in and disdain for traditional utilities
and appeal to customers’ emotions. Over 61 pages, pain is cited at least 31
times and fear at least a dozen. When reviewing a customer’s traditional
utility bill, the trainee is told, “amplify the pain significantly.” Among
“components of success”: “creating pain and fear.” Among the “five fatal
flaws” to avoid: “failing to build pain or fear.”

Not the company I want to be stuck in a 20-year contract with.

~~~
ChuckMcM
It is funny because we get cold called by these folks probably twice a year,
and once a rep came up to our house and wanted to tell us about solar, so I
gave them a short tour of the 5KW system we installed 15 years ago. The one
that has literally paid for itself (about half way through year 11) based on
actual generation and power consumption statistics. It would have paid for
itself sooner except that PG&E has twice updated the grid tie rules which have
incrementally reduced the benefit of rooftop solar.

The TPO systems as described are a boon to PG&E who, if you can believe their
actions, is really concerned that people will just drop off the grid
altogether.

~~~
skybrian
Even without explicit subsidies, it seems like rooftop solar is still getting
hidden subsidies? If homeowners were paid wholesale rates for the power they
provide, with prices based on the spot market, would any of it make sense
financially?

~~~
vkou
No, it wouldn't. For the same reason that me operating a coal power plant in
my backyard wouldn't provide me with cheaper electricity then just buying from
the grid.

A centralized utility, even a poorly run one, will always provide electricity
safer, cheaper, and more consistently then thousands of tiny private
installations.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I like this argument but I disagree with it.

I will stipulate that PG&E qualifies as a 'poorly run, centralized utility'
and based on its billing it cannot provide power to residential homes for less
money than a locally installed solar system can.

The reasons for this are worth considering.

PG&E has to maintain a power transmission infrastructure. That infrastructure
has a high inspection cost, land use cost, equipment costs, and insurance risk
cost (witness that the threat of the being found liable that their
transmission line maintenance (or lack thereof) contributed to the most
expensive wild fire in CA history).

Then there are the externalities which we don't account for as much in either
scenario. Whether it is the cost of scrubbers on a coal plant, the waste
storage costs of nuclear, or the gas pipeline infrastructure for natural gas
plants that leaks methane into the air.

What solar does it centralizes the manufacture of the energy production
equipment with finite externalitie. It provides highly granular capacity that
can be deployed without large step wise changes in capacity (this is the
'nearly unused plant' problem where you have to run a plant because the
instantaneous need occasionally exceeds your current generate capacity while
the average need is staying below that level (this is where Teslas battery
farms help energy companies cut costs).

So when comparing systems dollars to systems dollars, Solar with the current
economics of about $3.25/watt installed is actually cheaper than poorly run
centralized power plants.

~~~
vkou
Oh, don't get me wrong - solar power generation is _fantastic_ in areas that
can support it (Which is most of the world.)

 _Rooftop_ solar power generation is what I have an issue with. Utility-scale
solar has all the advantage that you cited, without the disadvantages of being
incredibly labour-intensive, overcomplicating the electric grid, and
offloading long-term maintenance to non-experts.

If you are going 100% off-the grid, then yes, local installations may be
cheaper (Because they don't include the cost of maintaining the grid.)

However, you'll still have to maintain a national grid - because not all
buildings or businesses have the rooftop capacity, or the hundreds of
thousands of dollars in capital to install enormous battery blocks.

So, what ends up happening, is that a few people drop off the system, and
raise prices for everyone else - including people who don't have the option to
drop off the grid. My building, for instance, houses 40 units. It has four
times the rooftop capacity of an average home. No amount of battery storage is
ever going to let it be grid-independent. Other residences dropping off the
grid, completely, just shift costs around - they wont reduce overall costs.

~~~
skybrian
It requires a grid, but maybe not a national grid?

There has been a lot of talk about how we need more long-distance power lines
for load-balancing solar and wind. However, the PG&E bankruptcy seems to show
that we've been underestimating what it takes to properly maintain a grid. Are
long-distance power lines more expensive than we thought?

Or maybe rural, fire-prone areas would do better with more local solutions
that reduce the amount of low-usage power lines that need to be maintained?

~~~
hedora
PG&E is a pretty poor strawman for anti-grid arguments. CA pays 2x what
neighboring states do for electricity, and despite having mild weather and
high population density have unreasonably high levels of safety and
reliability issues.

It’s probably second only to Puerto Rico on that front, at least in the US.

Having said that, I’m eagerly awaiting the day I can disconnect my house from
the grid, and close my account with them.

------
imgabe
When you get down into the meat of how the tax credits and Sunrun's financing
work it's astonishing.

Essentially it sounds like Sunrun's investors are paying to install solar
panels on your house so they can claim the tax credit to offset their own
income. Meanwhile you are paying Sunrun for the electricity generated by the
solar panels.

There doesn't seem to be much benefit for the homeowner. You're better off
buying the system up front if possible or even financing it and claiming the
tax credit yourself. Then you'd only have to pay the utility for the
electricity you don't generate.

"The American way" anymore seems to be to take a good idea, overcomplicate it
with financial engineering, and funnel the profits to a small minority of
people who actually understand what's going on.

~~~
michaelt

      You're better off buying the system up front if possible
    

When I looked into it in my country, the payback time for a solar system was
10+ years, and estate agents were reportedly estimated they added nothing to
the value of the house.

Buying is all very well if you're sure to stay in the same place for 10+ years
- but if you move in that time, better hope you place a high value on feeling
you've helped the environment.

Not that having a mandatory loan you try to get prospective buyers to pay for
is a better decision, of course...

~~~
itronitron
You don't want it to add value to your house because then you will end up
paying higher property taxes on a higher appraised value. The benefit of solar
can be stated to a prospective buyer as X dollars less on utility bills each
year.

~~~
URSpider94
Huh??

I buy a house for $100k. I put $15k of solar panels on it. I go to sell it a
year later, and sell it for $100k. That is what it means for solar panels not
to add value - I just lost my $15k investment.

Incidentally, that appears to be the case for residential solar in CA. It
doesn’t factor in appreciably to the price of a home.

~~~
itronitron
Your neighbor buys a house for $100k, doesn't install solar and then sells
their house a year later for $85k.

------
city41
We bought a house with TPO panels from SolarCity. It's been ... ok. Our
monthly payment never goes up for the life of the lease and SolarCity sends us
a check if the panels ever don't produce enough. They provide 100% of our
electricity and we generate excess that the power company pays us a tiny
amount for.

If I could do it again I'd get a house without TPO panels. If for nothing
else, just one less variable and thing to consider. You can always get panels
later.

But I gotta say, SolarCity themselves were an absolute nightmare to work with.
The person who got the panel deal on our house (two owners ago), has two other
panel deals with SolarCity on two other houses. When we took over the lease
SolarCity basically just munged all of the account details together. A major
red flag went off when they asked if I'd like to pay my bill with my Wells
Fargo account. I don't have a Wells Fargo account. For over a year I had to
fight these morons to get everything squared away and to finally get my
account onto their online portal so I could pay online. Every single month
they tried to either charge me for the other systems, or have the other guy
pay for ours, and with each other's bank accounts. They told me to not make
any payments until this was resolved, but also told me they'd send me to
collections for non-payment. It was an absolute nightmare. Don't ever work
with SolarCity.

~~~
toomuchtodo
1\. (Edit: In most cases) Never pay for premium PV panels. The 10-20% premium
only nets you an additional 1-2% in generation output.

2\. Always get at least three quotes, using energysage:
[https://www.energysage.com](https://www.energysage.com)

3\. As a residential customer, never sign a PPA. Either pay cash or get a loan

4\. Tesla solar customer service is wildly inconsistent. Even as a Tesla
investor, I do not recommend them for solar.

Sorry for your poor Solar City experience.

~~~
CydeWeys
Premium PV panels can be worth it if they look better. My parents paid a bit
extra for black rather than blue solar panels (said panels also have higher
output), and the house really does look a lot better for it. This can matter
come sale time; curbside appearance is very important in real estate.

~~~
wlesieutre
Also a good value if you're launching them into space

~~~
dragonwriter
Launching a rooftop residential installation into space is kind of a niche use
case, though.

~~~
wlesieutre
Elon Musk needs one up there to charge his Roadster

------
georgeecollins
An important take away from this article is simply the perils of home buying.
People usually only do it once or twice in their life (I have done it twice so
far) and it's really easy to make a very expensive mistake. Imagine this
article with another property problem instead of Sun Run: a mother-in-law unit
with a tenant, a disputed property line, a requirement to retrofit the house
to make it earthquake proof, illegal additions to the house.. etc. All those
things can be pitfalls in a house purchase that a buyer will not know much
about.

The realtor sounds extremely negligent to not correctly inform the buyer about
the true situation until after offer is made. That should be a flag. Realtors
understand loss aversion and that you can get very fixated on a particular
house. Better to get you to start thinking the house will be yours then break
the bad news to you. People just don't buy houses often enough, and they get
too emotionally attached, to make rational decisions. Listen to the author
talk about how this is the place where he might raise a child. That sounds so
portentous, but really wherever you live is where you might raise a child.

Owning a house can be great, but the best way to do it is to think about it
like buying a used car. Realize the people you are working with are nicer,
smarter used car salesmen. Check everything out with true third parties and be
ready to back out.

~~~
astura
>The realtor sounds extremely negligent to not correctly inform the buyer
about the true situation until after offer is made.

Its par for the course - realtors rarely know anything at all about the
property they are selling other than what the MLS says (and the MLS is often
inaccurate and/or missing information). I was looking at a house and asked if
the fireplace was functional and the seller's agent answered with "I don't
live here, so I don't know." Another time, back when I was looking to rent, I
asked about laundry facilities in the building, she was like "idk." Neither
even offered to get an answer for me.

~~~
georgeecollins
I agree. My point is that people go into it thinking the realtor knows what
they are doing. And they probably do in general. But there are a lot of blind
spots.

Also, an earlier poster said that inspectors are highly motivated to protect
you. I can only offer anecdotes, but my experience was that realtors liked
some inspectors more than others. All inspectors probably know they have to
tell you about big problems. Some are really thorough about all issues
including small ones. Realtors, who want to get the deal done, hate the
nitpicky inspectors. But nitpicky is good for negotiating. I am no expert, I
am just sharing my impression.

------
CompelTechnic
>Supporting renewable energy is important, and I get spending a little more to
help the planet. But a for-profit company like Sunrun wasn’t my idea of the
right place to do it.

That's a pretty strange sentiment. 20 years ago, solar was decidedly more
expensive than it is now. A fair price would be higher than grid power. For
the installation to have occurred at all, the up front capital cost had to be
amortized by a for-profit company in an attractive way. This appears to have
been crafted as a payment schedule that's slightly back-heavy. Seems to me
that the author just didn't want to be left holding the bag, but still wanted
to pay lip service and feel like a good environmentalist.

~~~
matthewdgreen
Seems like one thing to make the payment schedule back-heavy and be honest
about it, another thing to use unrealistic assumptions about utility price
increases to disguise this payment schedule as a lifetime cost savings.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
And the huge issue is that if it's a back-heavy payment scheme: A future buyer
will only see the heavier portion. Which makes your house less attractive to a
buyer, and devalues your home, which also hurts any potential cost savings.

~~~
CompelTechnic
The growth rate of the payment is 2.9%. This is only very slightly higher than
inflation, on average.

Also, assuming that the lower home value came true, the original purchaser of
the solar installation did put his money where his mouth is, and paid a
financial cost to his environmental interests, which is the moral thing to do,
regardless of whether he was "tricked" by the negative cash flows showing up
in later years (and in this case, when he was dead).

I guess my main point from my multiple posts is that there is no free lunch.
If the fully amortized cost of solar is higher than grid power, someone will
have to pay. Someone with buyer's remorse, who fully understood the cash flow
implications at the time of purchase, can still feel like they were tricked.
And maybe, the pessimistic projections of grid power costs made by sunrun
should be taken with a grain of salt, and it should also be acknowledged that
this deceptive practice is helping the planet.

Maybe a game theory perspective is valuable here- assuming cooperation is
possible, people place an irrationally small cost to global warming, and
discount future costs (in this case, of their power bill) to an irrationally
large degree. The way to get people to cooperate is to trade one irrational
impulse for another.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Sure, someone is going to have to pay for greener power. But the problem is
that Sunrun is claiming it's cheaper, even though it isn't, and that the owner
ends up paying both Sunrun's expenses _and_ their profit margin.

------
wccrawford
>It’s far more common for home sellers to transfer the lease to the
buyer—Sunrun says 94 percent of customers do this—or to prepay the lease and
leave the hardware on the roof for the next owner to use. I’ve been kicking
myself ever since I learned about this latter option. It would have saved the
estate around $12,000 and allowed us to support solar and get “free”
electricity, even as Sunrun remained responsible for maintenance and repairs.

I'm not surprised Sunrun chose not to tell them about that option as it seems
like a losing situation for them. They claim that Sunrun would have been
covered, but that merely means they fail to lose money. They stood to make
money on that system, and no sane solar panel buyer is going to have heavily
used panels put in.

>Aided by a local attorney and my father-in-law, a retired contract attorney,
I drafted a letter to Jug’s trust accusing the listing agents of failing to
deliver title to the property free of any third-party claims as the agents had
said they could. I threatened legal action. It was a last-ditch effort that
none of us expected to work. Then it did.

I'm not surprised this worked. Their whole job is to present the actual
situation during the sale and they failed at it. There are probably a lot of
legal issues with what they did and I bet the agent was quaking in their boots
at the thought of that going to trial.

~~~
sthu11182
regarding the legal action: based on my recollection from real estate class in
law school, failing to provide a free and clear title on a general warranty
deed is a pretty straight forward victory. if i remember anything from that
class, always get a general warranty deed (ie a deed with all the covenants)
when buying a house.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Your class was correct (I just had to go through this very scenario this week,
albeit not for solar, with a local title company transferring some property).

Never take action that is going to jeopardize free and clear title on your
real estate.

------
jawns
Here's a cautionary tale of purchasing a home with solar panels, even if
they're not leased from a third party.

We bought a house with solar panels in 2016. The seller had purchased the
system less than a year before the house went on the market, and one of the
key selling points was that there was no lease to deal with; by purchasing the
home, we would 100% own the solar panels and would reap all the benefits of
what they generated.

Six months after the sale was finalized, we changed Internet providers and
soon after that, we were forwarded an email by the seller from an organization
we had never heard of, asking us to reconnect the solar panels to the Internet
as a condition of their contract.

Um ... what contract?

It turns out that when the seller purchased the panels, they made a deal with
this green-energy company, which was sort of a joint venture between our
state's biggest utility and the state itself. The organization paid the seller
$6K up front. The seller, in turn, agreed that for the next 20 years, any
Solar Renewable Energy Credits generated by the panels would belong to the
organization.

The existence of this contract, which included a lien on the SRECS, was never
disclosed to us. And it never showed up on the title search because the lien
was on this abstract credit, not on any physical property. The lawyer who did
the closing had never heard of anything like it!

We ended up having to get a different lawyer involved, and it was a big
production, because not only had the organization dealt with relatively few
transfers of ownership, it had never dealt with a case where the SRECS
contract was not transferred as part of the home sale, and undoing the mess
the seller had caused by not disclosing it took a lot of legal legwork.

In the end, the organization agreed to remove the lien, rather than continue a
legal battle, and I assume it then went after the seller for whatever portion
of the $6K advance payment it could recoup.

The lesson I learned from all of this is that when it comes to solar panels,
not even the people in the industry have much experience with the edge cases.
And although installations are starting to become routine, transfers of
ownership are not yet routine.

(By the way, the solar panels work well, and our energy bills are very low,
but I wish someone would have told me that squirrels love to build nests under
the panels and chew through wires, because yeah, that's happened, and it's not
covered under the warranty.)

~~~
vkou
I am amazed that a company in the business of putting up solar panels on
residential homes considers selling the home to be a weird _edge_ case in
their business.

------
01100011
A friend was a salesman for SunRun back in 2011 and at the time I was growing
pot so I was looking to reduce my energy costs. I got an 8.8kW system(a bit
large for my house). I spent probably $1k/year extra for electricity during
the first year. Over time, the system started to actually save me money, but
it took about 5 years. I also had a bunch of power I was obligated to buy, so
I lost the incentive to conserve and ran my central A/C nearly all the time.
When I had to sell my house after a divorce, I realized what a pain in the ass
it would be. I had to convince the buyer that it was a good idea to assume the
lease. I found out things like the requirement to pay thousands to remove the
system if the roof needed replacement(one SunRun rep, not my friend, hinted
during sign-up that they maintained the roof). The system only saved money if
you consumed a lot of electricity. If you didn't need the power, you're stuck
paying for it anyway. Fortunately the buyer went for it and I escaped the
lease.

Another annoyance was the inverter box that SunRun installed right outside my
bedroom. Every morning and night, the system would turn on and off several
times as the light levels were close to the threshold. This meant some rather
large relays were clicking repeatedly, waking me up at dawn a lot of the time.
On the plus side, I got a new breaker panel and had my service rating upgraded
from 100A to 150A.

If I had to sum it up, I'd say that SunRun isn't absolutely evil, but if I
ever do it again I would buy the system outright, assuming it was economically
viable. My personal opinion is that residential solar is a misallocation of
resources as long as there are commercial rooftops without solar.

------
throwaway5752
FYI, this has nothing to do with solar panels and everything to do with a
buying a house that has stuff with transferable contracts. Save up and buy
your solar outright, companies don't lease things to you unless there is
profit in it.

~~~
CydeWeys
It has to do with solar panels to the extent that there's very little else
that anyone would put on their house that uses a transferable contract. Solar
panels are the most common instance in which anyone would run into this
situation. I'm struggling to think of anything else, actually.

~~~
giarc
When we toured our home, the water softener system said rental on it. We
inquired and the home owner confirmed the unit was purchased out right. So
water softener systems is another potential example.

~~~
seanalltogether
A water well was the first thing I thought of as a possible transferable
lease, I could see septic systems possibly being leased too.

Edit- Some houses are also still heated by oil that has to be delivered on a
routine basis and I could see that having a lease as well.

~~~
astura
How do you lease oil delivery? Or do you mean the tank itself?

If you have an agreement for an oil company to come fill your oil when it gets
low, you just terminate your agreement when you sell your house.

~~~
seanalltogether
Tank installation + piping + maintenance + exclusive oil supplier, all wrapped
up in a 10 year contract attached to the property. I'm not saying there are
companies that do that, but I could see it being a possible business model.

~~~
astura
Oil tanks + installation are cheap enough I'm not sure it would make financial
sense for this to be a business model (we were quoted a ballpark figure of
$1,500 to replace ours). Oil tanks require no maintenance whatsoever, just
replacement every 15-30 years.

I have an agreement from a company that they deliver oil automatically when I
need it, but I don't pay anything extra vs just calling them for a one time
delivery and I can terminate the agreement at any time.

------
MichaelApproved
> _It appeared that if we bought Jug’s place, we’d have to assume his lease
> arrangement with Sunrun._

The whole article is worth reading but this headache is specifically related
to leased panels. Though, leasing makes going solar easier, it is a terrible
idea because of issues like these.

Also, every local power company has different arrangements for residents. I
live in Suffolk county, Long Island, New York. Our power company arrangement
is amazing. We get to sell back any excess power at the same rate we buy it
from them. Meaning, they act like a free battery.

I have a 20 years term that started from the day I installed my panels to use
up any excess energy they're holding for me. After that 20 years term is over,
they pay me the wholesale rate for any leftover power, which is next to
nothing.

I don't pay extra fees for net metering but we do have the highest rates in
the nation. It's roughly $0.20/kwh, including delivery, taxes and other fees.

If I end up having any extra power and Crypto is still a thing, I'd just plug
in a miner and drain it all. It'd be a bonus if I did it during winter and use
the heat to warm the house.

Regarding the purchase, I financed the purchase. Got 0% loan on the expected
tax credit portion and 6.5% on the rest for 15 years. Even with the interest
rates, I'll be cash-flow positive on the monthly payments.

I also essentially locked in my utility costs. My local power company is
expected to raise rates 3-5% a year. If I pay my loan off early, I get to
avoid those rate increases for the portion of electricity that my panels
cover.

Anyway, if you're thinking about going solar, check your local utility rules
and go for the purchase option. Leases are not worth the baggage they come
with.

------
joshe
The tax credit thing as designed by legislation is nutty. It lets companies
buy your tax credit and use it to offset their own income. Leading to all this
zero value financial engineering.

But from a homeowner's point of view and Sunrun's point of view it makes
sense. Lots of people might not be able use the tax credit because they
already owe have low income tax (moderate income + mortgage interest
deduction, or retired with a nice nest egg will get you to very low income
tax).

(If you pay enough income tax to use the credit you should just get a loan and
avoid this.)

This was legislated poorly, probably in order to call it a "tax credit"
instead of "subsidy". A subsidy would be much cleaner, have the same economics
and they should just do it that way. This whole mess and industry was created
just for this one talking point. The government giving you $2000 off an
installation is the same as getting a $2000 tax credit from the Treasury's
point of view.

Sunrun sounds like not the best business to be involved with. Like "new buyer
doesn't want the system" is an obvious thing for the customer service manual.
(Referring to "...prepay the lease and leave the hardware ... I’ve been
kicking myself ever since I learned about this latter option. It would have
saved the estate around $12,000").

Also they are clearly selling this to a bunch of people who could easily use
the tax credit and could easily get a homeowner's loan. Super dodgy. I'll bet
a lot of the sales nonsense is to hide this fact.

------
diafygi
Not trying to discredit or de-emphasize the conclusion, but the ironic thing
here is that the utility cost escalation rates that Sunrun had initially
calculated were likely based off of pre-solar boom tariff increases.

As renewables have started becoming competitive (both utility-scale and
distributed), utilities have been able to avoid building more expensive
fossil-based power plants and transmission lines as quickly and thus rates
haven't increased as much as before. So basically the solar industry partially
created their own financial situation where the utility costs they are
offsetting are lower because of their own participation in the market. Ha.

Anyway, I'm glad this in-the-weeds analysis is getting some coverage. As more
and more "Distributed Energy Resources" (DERs) are installed in homes ($300
smart thermostats, $1k demand response water heaters, $5k batteries, $10k
solar, etc.), people should be aware they need to do utility bill cost
analysis earlier in the home buying process. Also, realtors need to get more
savvy on utility bill cost impact of all these new DERs so they know how to
adjust pricing based on what's installed in a home or building.

Disclaimer: I have a software company that many solar companies use to request
utility bill history from customers for financial analysis.

~~~
merpnderp
I'm curious how solar could have put a dent in overall power production needs
as peek energy usage comes around 6-8pm when solar panels are producing almost
no power. And since utilities need to plan their production around peak usage
far more than around overall usage, has solar really done that much to lower
utility production requirements?

~~~
diafygi
Yes, there is just that much solar being installed. The grid demand curve used
to look like a bell curve (peaks mid-day, goes down in the evening). Nowadays,
in California there's so much solar that it basically decapitates the curve
half way down. Here's today's CAISO demand curve:

[http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx](http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx)

The industry term for this is called the "Duck Curve", where you install so
much solar that you mostly reduce daytime electricity demand, but have peaks
in the morning and evening.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve)

~~~
merpnderp
I know it breaks HN protocol to leave a comment just saying thanks, but
thanks. Those were very interesting/educational links.

------
filesystemdude
I evaluated solar cells for my home, and ultimately decided against because I
probably get more total energy saving from the current passive solar of having
huge south-facing windows and an oak tree in front of my house - free heat in
the winter, shaded in the summer. For solar electric to work, the oak tree
would have to go.

That said, central issue mentioned in this article aside (which is legit
concerning), cost wasn't really an issue I spent much time worrying about. Am
I the only person more interested in giving the middle finger to my corrupt
utility provider and their coal-centered power generation strategy than
whether I came out a few bucks ahead or behind in 20 years? I suspect a lot of
people who install solar have similar motivations.

But that in itself can be a problem, too. The thing that concerns me about
household solar is that it's a bit like owning a Prius - it becomes a status
symbol for people more interested in _appearing_ green and assuaging their
guilt than actual concern about their total carbon footprint. Take a vacation
to Hawaii once a year and you'll probably knock off every single bit of good
you did for the planet.

------
xfour
Ahh yes Sunrun. We bought a house and our realtor had the foresight to
investigate the situation before we closed on the home. We got a letter
disclosing the system was owned free and clear. We setup the online tracking
portal only to notice that they transferred the account like thousands of
dollars in owed monies from the previous owner. After getting a call from the
company trying to strongarm us for the debt we essentially told them to kick
rocks.

They should’ve just demanded that money as part of escrow and now they’re left
with a debt in someone else’s name that is never going to be paid and likely a
headache for us in the future.

------
CydeWeys
My parents have a large solar installation on their roof that they own
outright. They paid for it cash, but if they hadn't had that much available,
then a HELOC would have sufficed and not produced any of this kind of drama at
sale time.

Don't lease anything on your house; it's a huge hassle. Get a loan/HELOC for
it if necessary and the numbers work out, but don't enter into a long leasing
agreement that can cause transferral problems down the road.

~~~
astura
Not all leases are terrible, though most probably are. I have a leased propane
tank, it's not a hassle or anything, I don't pay anything to lease it, I just
pay the company for the propane when it need filling. It only needs filling
like every 3-4 years because it's only used for the stove. I'm not really sure
why its leased, but it could probably be replaced easily if need be.

I think the people these sorts of things appeal to are the people who have
poor credit and/or very little equity in their house.

------
kryogen1c
>Accounting for all these things, taking on Jug’s lease would translate to us
paying at least $30 a month more. We’d lose money from Day 1

I'm unsure how I feel about this. $30 is a significant % of the electric bill,
but is a very small % of the cost of owning a home.

Didn't solar start as economically viable due to heavy government tax
incentives? I'm ignorant of the data, but I thought solar was not fit for
public deployment has only edge use cases.

~~~
zdragnar
Take that $30, stick it in a savings or investment. When solar prices go down,
or utility prices go up, take the money you've saved up and then put it
towards the purchase.

There's no point in throwing away money on a losing proposition, since in this
case the homeowner wouldn't be the one to get the credit. As an additional
bonus, your home will have newer, more efficient panels with a longer
remaining estimated lifetime, so if you do end selling the house they'll add
more value.

A solar install in a reasonably sunny climate can pay for itself over its
lifespan, but you need to actually stay there the whole time, or hope that the
added value to your house makes up for whatever your investment was.

------
ananonymoususer
I'm closing on a new house tomorrow. The builder has a business arrangement
with Sunstreet Solar and they have a ~4KW plant on the roof. While researching
the details of the sale, I discovered that Sunstreet owns the panels and has
an easement. They get 80% of the generated power and give me 20%. This did not
seem like a good deal to me. I negotiated the purchase of the system from
Sunstreet as part of the sale, and I got the home builder to reduce the price.
This way I can claim the federal tax credit, and I get 100% of the generated
power instead of 20%.

------
rhacker
DIY array with 17 panels should cost $5000 today with inverters and grid tie -
thought I would forgo the grid tie and just get a shit fuck ton of lead acids
(probably 30 for another $3000) and have energy for at least a day.

Stop paying these racket companies and their dumbass contracts. The DIY is
totally easy.

------
misterpoopoo
There’s a couple things wrong with this article and I have a decent
understanding of why Jug (RIP) did what he did. (I worked at Sunrun and
created this fake account to hide identity; I worked in finance). Not to bash
the sales reps or trainers, but they are so far removed from the financing of
the product they don’t know what’s going on.

First, at the end the sales rep who provided the #s is bullshit. The sales
reps are notorious for inputting whatever #s they want into the internal SFDC
system so the average monthly bill isn’t accurate. This isn’t an exception,
it’s their own rule to accelerate sales (management does not tell them to do
this. To be specific)

The 2.9% escalator is an aggressive and risky product, but requires zero
upfront and an incredibly low initial $/kWh. He more than likely was saving
money and would have been for at least several years. I don’t know his
intentions but you can read between the lines and I don’t want to talk about
the dead.

Also, I forget if Conedison does tier pricing, but if it did with all his
gadgets, his bill would have been through the roof.

Lastly, Sunrun does offer cash/loan/0%/1.9%/prepaid products, and if I were to
go for a cash deal, I would use Sunrun/Vivint/SolarCity because it’s a huge
headache to coordinate with developers and file all the correct paperwork.

------
dev_dull
This is almost entirely for people with solar leases, and not solar loans or
paid-off panels.

For panels that are paid off it's a great deal to pay a little more for the
house. It just becomes a tax-deductible loan even though it saves you money
each month.

------
nappy-doo
A couple years ago, we purchased and had installed a solar system. In MA,
there is an incentive program called SRECs, which is a program where the
utilities have to buy MWH of produced electricity, and I can sell my MWH of
produced electricity -- that's tracked as an SREC. I can sell SRECs for 10
years, I make about 5-6 a year, and they go for 200-300$. It makes the payoff
on the system about 4 years, and ROIC about 17%. If, when I go to sell, the 10
year window on the SRECs haven't finished the buyer and I will have to come to
an arrangement for the remaining credits.

IMO, solar generally complicates all housing related transactions, but it's
worth it.

~~~
ip26
As far as I know, the SREC is a one-time lump sum for the 10 year period, so
you're looking at one payment of $1,000-$1,800 right?

~~~
ecopoesis
SRECs are generated and auctioned quarterly. After an initial lag I get a
check for SREC sales every 3 months.

There are schemes where you can get fixed price SRECs by signing them over to
a 3rd-party. The third-party then give you a fixed amount monthly or quarterly
or whatever but it's a significant discount on the auction price.

There are also companies that will give you a lump sum for your 10-years of
SRECs up front but like all 'need cash now' schemes there is a significant
discount.

------
mrdoops
It's not strictly a per-company problem. The incentives are for per-watt i.e.
bigger system = bigger commission for the company instead of maximizing
customer savings with Solar. The incentives don't align customers, sales,
utilities, and financial providers.

Authority (City, Utility, etc.) typically push and constrain the installation
at least 3-6 weeks and they rarely actually know Solar well enough to be a
real 'Authority'. Lots of poorly implemented review procedures from untrained
city officials and inspectors. Many unnecessary revisions, nitpicks, and
expensive truck rolls surface here.

Then we also have Sales and Financing Providers who have the most leverage out
of the stakeholders. High leverage also means they tend to get the biggest cut
for a given Solar contract. High commissions and high fees or they leave the
installation company who has to fulfill a 2-6 month-payout-delay pipeline. The
fulfillment team also has the most people to retain, train, and coordinate
over what is typically a multi-state field operation problem.

Not at all easy. Still, it boils my blood seeing some of these organizations
fall prey to these pressures and turn to customer exploitation. What it
amounts to is some deep-rooted systemic issues with the government-enforced
monopolies of our utility companies, overly-simplistic incentives, and a
market moving faster than the training and organizational development.

------
CydeWeys
It's sad that the resolution of the contractual dispute involved removing the
solar panels. That's a lose-lose for everyone -- the company because they have
to spend additional labor, the new owner because they would've preferred them
to stay at a reasonable price, and of course the environment.

It's too bad the company couldn't come to terms somehow; surely accepting less
money in a buy-out offer would have been better for them than having to come
out and collect all of their equipment?

------
seiferteric
I had a very similar experience when selling my house but with vivint solar. I
had panels installed less than a year before and soon found out all these
issues. Should have read the contract more thoroughly of course, but I am
pretty sure the sales people mislead or even lied to me when I asked them
questions about what happens if we move etc. Luckily the buyer agreed to take
over the lease. If/when I get panels on my new house, I will almost certainly
buy them outright.

------
throwaway5752
I don't know enough about Sunrun or the author here, but I will say that - as
a general principle - when you see a human interest piece about a multi-
billion dollar company with close to 15% of their shares sold short
([https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RUN/key-
statistics](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RUN/key-statistics)) then I would
take it with a grain of salt and question what is being presented.

edit: and you have to get more than halfway through to see the author managed
to take the path of maximal pain: _" Sunrun calls our insistence that Jug’s
trust buy out and remove the system “incredibly unique and rare.” It’s far
more common for home sellers to transfer the lease to the buyer—Sunrun says 94
percent of customers do this—or to prepay the lease and leave the hardware on
the roof for the next owner to use. I’ve been kicking myself ever since I
learned about this latter option. It would have saved the estate around
$12,000 and allowed us to support solar and get “free” electricity, even as
Sunrun remained responsible for maintenance and repairs."_

edit 2: _" On consumer review sites and in local news reports, rueful
customers warn others to stay away from TPO solar offered by Sunrun and other
companies"_ \- is that true of everything, and none cited? What if this was an
article about car dealership?

edit 3: Having finished the article (and having never heard of Sunrun prior to
this) it has the feel of a hit-piece. I don't think it is necessarily (author
seems to have a solid investigative journalism track record), but it cherry
picks very small sets of data without context and it frames things in what
seems like a maximally negative way. Not sure if their experience with their
specific bad experience and Bloomberg's comp based on moving markets had
anything to do with it.

------
cjhopman
> If Southern California Edison's residential rates continue to rise annually
> by 2.2 percent, as they have on average over the last decade, Jug's total
> electricity outlay having gone solar would have cost about $6,000 more over
> 20 years.

Isn't the math that came to that conclusion completely fucked up?

$115 _(1.022 ^ 20) = $177

$75_(1.029 ^ 20) + $17 * (1.022 ^ 20) = $159

In fact, I'm about 100% sure that that $6000 figure is the amount of
additional money that is payed to sunrun due to the increase costs (difference
between $75/month for 20 years and the cost with 2.9% increase). It looks like
the journalist then went and misinterpreted that data and made up a completely
fake chart below it to fit their interpretation of the data. In that chart,
clearly the socal edison side should start with a higher cost than the sunrun
side and the socal edison cost at 20 years should actually be above the $2k
line.

~~~
cjhopman
Okay... way at the end of the article they say that $115 isn't the real amount
he was paying, he was only really paying $79. Making that change gets a lot
closer to their -6000/+4000 for 2.2%/4.75% electricity increases.

------
zeroonetwothree
I bought a house in CA a few years ago and had to assume the previous owner’s
SunRun lease. I didn’t really want to but even if it ends up costing me
slightly more in the long term (for now it’s unclear) it’s very minor in the
land of $1.5 million housing. This article seems to be making a huge deal over
a minor $30/month cost.

~~~
michaelt
The article says the payments to buy out the contract totalled $27,300.

I wish I had the kind of income that made me call that a 'minor cost' !

~~~
aidenn0
That's about a third of what the realtors get on a $1.5M sale.

------
jpeg_hero
It’s always seemed so obvious to me: electronics depreciate at a rapid rate,
solar panels are electronics, do not finance electronics over 20 years and
think it’s going to work.

For a 20 year lease, do you really want to be using a 19 year old system stuck
on your roof ? Big clunky, weathered with spiderwebs. What does that look
like?

~~~
randombit
Solar panels don't depreciate in the same way as most silicon. 20 years later,
panels will still be producing power just fine, albeit with some degradation.

Source: my house has 23 year old solar panels, my garage has 10 year old
panels, they all still produce plenty of electricity.

There are plenty of reasons to avoid dealing with these companies, but this
isn't one of them.

~~~
antisthenes
Out of curiosity, how much do your 23 year old solar panels produce compared
to when they were new? 90%? 85%?

------
jrochkind1
> Hugh Bromley, a solar analyst at BloombergNEF, says Sunrun and its
> competitors offer solar, sure, but can be better understood as having
> created “one of the most sophisticated financial engineering industries of
> any sector of the U.S. economy.”

While this is just a prejudice and their financial engineering _may_ be
totally sound, this makes me think of CDOs and the mortgage crisis and all
that.

The fact that the deal may not actually be all that good for the consumer --
and may complicate sales of their house since it's effectively a lien forcing
future buyers to take a deal which may be _more apparent as bad_ in the future
-- only makes me again think of the financial hijinx that led to the mortgage
bubble/crisis.

------
rebuilder
The article says Sunrun's shares rose when California decided to mandate solar
panels on new constructions starting 2020. This doesn't really make sense to
me. The reason stated was that developers don't like to install solar because
it inflates the sticker price, but if you're taking out a mortgage, then
you're probably looking at a payback timeline similar to the 20 year lease
Sunrun offers. I don't really see how it makes sense not to take on the 5-10%
(depending on installation size and house price of course) extra mortgage for
what should be a cheaper overall cost over a similar timespan.

~~~
linuxftw
People don't buy houses, they buy payments. Specifically, whatever their
lender will give them. Any additional principal balance is more they have to
qualify for and more money required for down payment.

If you're thinking "Wow, that's nuts that people would spend 100% of what a
lender will qualify them for," then, I say to you "Welcome to America."

------
briandear
Saving $24 a month with solar panels seems hardly worth the effort. Why not
just build nuclear plants and dispense with the tedium of house installed
solar? Dealing with solar panels seems like such a such a pain.

------
tomc1985
The savings that Sunrun advertises seem rather... meager. $2000 over 20 years?

------
aj7
I spent considerable time evaluating solar installation, in of all places,
Tucson. The perfect place, right? I viewed it as replacing a fixed income
investment. (1) The internal rate of return was 1% (2) It was obvious that any
government subsidy was swallowed up by price increases. This was very sobering
to a leftist like me. (3) Grid connection and resell are critical, but there
is no way to guarantee the terms of this into the future.

After all that, my wife’s intuition was still crucial in nixing the panels.

------
wkearney99
Ugh, I do wish there were more neutral sources to learn more about residential
solar. Everything seems like such a con. I've got plenty of roof and
reasonable capital to purchase gear but nowhere near the time to ferret out
what's legit, what's a pie-eyed-pile-of-crap and what's an outright scam.

------
josefresco
This reminded me of a casual conversation with an acquaintance about how they
sold their home, with (older) solar panels and had some sort of agreement
where they still got paid for the money generated by the panels.

It sounded odd, as in; who would buy a house where something on the roof was
generating income for the previous owner? - Wouldn't you (the buyer) just buy
them out? No idea how this was structured - anyone have any background?

~~~
brandon272
Sounds like either an agreement with the new owner that involved a price
reduction on the home in exchange for the continued income. Or something
totally shady!

------
mcguire
" _...or to prepay the lease and leave the hardware on the roof for the next
owner to use. I’ve been kicking myself ever since I learned about this latter
option. It would have saved the estate around $12,000 and allowed us to
support solar and get “free” electricity, even as Sunrun remained responsible
for maintenance and repairs._ "

Wouldn't the author have been able to take the price of buying out the lease
off their taxes?

~~~
toomuchtodo
No. The federal tax credit was already realized by Sunrun, with the savings
passed along as part of the lease payments. No different then buying out a
lease on an EV, where the federal tax credit was realized by the leasing
company; no tax benefit.

In scenarios like this, the seller eats the remaining lease cost when the
property is sold (think of it as a reduction in sales price).

------
gwbas1c
I just built a house with solar panels. I had a bit of trouble with the bank,
because the appraiser refused include the panels when appraising the home.

Ultimately, my state offered better financing than a traditional mortgage. I
just wonder what's going to happen if I ask a buyer in 5, 10, or 20 years to
pay for the panels. They clearly reduce the home's energy consumption, and
thus have a clear demonstrated value.

------
peter303
I get 3rd party solar sales calls nearly every day. I cut to the point and
tell them my all-LED house plus new refrigerator averages 85 kwh month. That
stops them cold because they require 1000 kwh to make a profit. Maybe if I got
an EV I could crank up the usage a good deal.

I still dont know why they have called me several hundred times.

------
xbmcuser
At end of the day all this is US taxation system at work which does all it can
to help corporations and screw individuals.

------
shados
Reading the article, the problem is that they used one of those companies with
annoying business models to finance the solar panels somehow and you get some,
but not all, of the benefits. People in the community I live in are pushing
those models pretty hard.

Running the numbers, if you are privileged enough to have the money to just
buy the damn panels and get them installed outright, you're way, way better
off. I don't know if there's still good tax credits, but when I looked, they
got you a good chunk of change right there. After that, solar panels pay for
themselves in a pretty short amount of time if your electricity usage is high
enough to take full advantage of them (eg: if you have a central hvac system
or something), or have someone who will buy the surplus from you.

In my building, our power usage is way higher than we can get even if we
covered the entire roof with panels, so it's pretty easy: put panels, reduce
electricity cost, make up the money in a couple of years, don't deal with any
third party aside for the installation.

------
jccalhoun
Maybe it is because it is getting near lunch time but this article seemed
really rambling and disjointed. Is it about Sunrun or is it about the
industry? Or is it just the author's experience? It seems to be all three cut
and pasted together haphazardly.

------
codingdave
The fact that this is about solar is diminishing the actual lessons here -
don't sign contracts that are tied to your home's title. And if you find a
home you love that has a contract on its title, just walk away before getting
attached.

------
figital
I'd rather give excess power to my neighbors for free or just waste it on a
giant spinning pinwheel than "sell" it back to the power company. No mention
of local battery storage by the reporter or the "reported/reportee".

~~~
frankus
Local battery storage is nice in a power outage, but right now it isn't
remotely competitive with net metering.

I pay US$7.94 a month to my utility to "store" megawatt-hours of electricity
over the course of a year. Brand-name home battery storage is still well over
$500 per kilowatt-hour installed.

So yeah, I'll engage in shameless commerce with the evil corporate utility if
they'll loan me a $2.5-million-dollar "battery" for less than 8 bucks a month.

------
b1r6
Why would anyone do this? You should either save up and buy PV infrastructure
outright, or not have it at all. Being tied to some sketchy company via
contract sounds horrid. I would automatically exclude any homes with this
setup from my search.

------
JadeNB
I know we change titles to avoid click-baitiness, but surely "What happened
when I bought a house with solar panels" is not so sensational as to require
truncating to "I bought a house with solar panels"?

------
socrates1998
While this company is doing some pretty shady shit, it's actually not worse
than what traditional electric companies do.

Talk about corruption and dishonest practices.

In Florida, FPL, the electric provider for half of Florida, complained for
about a decade (from 2004-2014) on how how they needed to keep raising rates
so that they could continue to "upgrade the infrastructure" so that they could
be prepared for the hurricanes that inevitably would hit the coast.

Some estimates that FPL made a few extra billion dollars on the price
increases that went beyond normal inflation.

What do you think happened when south Florida got hit with the next major
hurricane in 2014? Yup. same outages that we saw in 2004.

And the hurricanes weren't even worse.

10 years and billions of dollars in "upgrades" resulted in the same exact
problems.

FPL took our money and didn't do anything with it.

AND they have been vehemently against people owning solar panels, even going
as far as blocking legislation that would allow people to install them on
their own homes without special permission from "FPL approved" companies.

And you can guess how many "approved" companies they would actually approve.

I have yet to see any major utility company operate with any decency, so while
this solar panel company is doing some shady shit with their salespeople and
leasing terms, it at least didn't scam millions of people for billions of
dollars like FPL.

Florida should have the cleanest electricity in the world. Sunshine almost
every day, but we don't have it because:

A) We don't price in the environmental impact of non-solar producing coal and
natural gas plants, thus keeping solar "more expensive" than fossil fuel
electricity.

B) FPL actively blocks the widespread adoption of solar panels on people's
homes.

C) Politicians are happy to take money from FPL and other interest groups that
don't want to adopt solar.

------
rconti
That buyout price is insane. It's more than we paid outright to have the same
number of panels installed in the bay area.

------
gameswithgo
I suppose if we ever sell our house we will need to remember to advertise that
the solar panels are totally paid for.

------
geggam
My view on solar is if you want to do it go completely off grid. Use small
wind turbines lots of solar panels a Tesla power wall and have a backup
generator

Problem with this is its not cheap. Not to mention many localities want to
make this option simply illegal.

------
sabujp
i think the next time the costco sunrun person tries to say hello to me, I'm
going to ask him how well he's been doing amplifying the pain

------
sigzero
What happened to the ones Tesla was coming out with?

~~~
rficcaglia
They recently (Dec) sent emails that they are scheduling appointments to those
who signed up on the list. Says only one of the several tile options available
though.

~~~
jrnichols
I had such high hopes for the Dow Solar shingles. Maybe the Tesla ones will
work out better.

------
zmix
> _" amplify the pain significantly"_

Wow, this __is __violence! With such extremisms being legit, one must not be
surprised, if extremism rises on all fronts!

Who likes business (wo)men?

------
sabujp
is there any company that hasn't gotten big by lying, cheating, overpromising,
stealing a dollar here and there, etc?

------
fouc
It was news to me that California actually voted in a law requiring all new
houses built after Jan 1, 2020 to have solar panels.

------
AnonymousRider
Do you also crave acknowledgement for your Prius, too?

------
mchannon
A few points this person probably didn't think about:

•Nobody knows what California electricity prices are going to do in the next
20 years. By terminating the system, they just traded certainty for
volatility. With that attitude I hope they financed using an ARM loan.

•They whined about how expensive it was, but also expressed a desire to have
one or two kids someday. When you have kids, your electric bills tend to go
up, and they did their math based on their "expected" usage today.

•Santa Barbara has a very mild climate, but I expect in the coming years it
will get hotter and muggier much more of the year, and for health reasons
they'll have to put a room A/C on. Whoa, now you're using as much juice as Jug
did.

•PV rooftop panels in California nowadays don't quite "help the planet" to the
extent their owners believe they do. The duck curve continues to get worse.

•A silent majority of people think PV panels are ugly. Like, hideously ugly.
They're afraid to speak out, but not to act out and point the finger at a
different reason.

The end result of this whole thing reminds me of one of those people 10 years
ago who bought a top-end $500 cellphone locked in to a carrier on a 3-year-
plan but only $50 a month, let the payments lapse 3 months in, and then tried
to sell it on eBay, angry at the cellphone company for financially hobbling
them when it wouldn't sell or it got returned.

~~~
Dylan16807
> Nobody knows what California electricity prices are going to do in the next
> 20 years.

That's true but with the way most utility costs have been dropping, the rates
are probably not going to skyrocket.

> using more power

The problem is the rate being too high. More use doesn't help the problem.

> duck curve

Sure, but not very important to this choice.

> A silent majority of people think PV panels are ugly. Like, hideously ugly.

Do you have evidence of how common that is? Does that include installations
that are well-integrated into the roof?

> cell plan

A typical cell phone contract breaking fee is $350, with some pro-rating. This
roughly covers the cost of a phone discount. They don't try to charge you
$1400 for the entire remaining contract term.

~~~
gwern
> That's true but with the way most utility costs have been dropping, the
> rates are probably not going to skyrocket.

With strict liability for wildfires, 'green deals', cap-and-trade or Pigovian
tax proposals, California's classic policy insanities, grids potentially
struggling with renewables and load sharing, you certainly cannot be >99%
confident that there will be no large increases in the offing.

~~~
Dylan16807
We'll see, sure.

Though when you're looking at a 20 year term it's easy to get solar panels
reactively instead of proactively.

