First electric bill with solar! (landlord, utilities, taxes)

[bkk1057]

Hi HX_Guy, In Portland SC sells power produced by the panels at 9.4c vs. 10.4c from PGE. However, my rate is further discounted to around 8c because the company I work for has a deal with SC. According to SC this rate is guaranteed even if somebody else buys the house and takes over the lease.

[Ultrarunner]

Originally Posted by M.Unit

Just in case someone is reading through here and thinking about the "lease" option...be aware that once you lease, that company expects the lease to continue regardless of who owns the house. If you're planning on selling then you better hope the person buying wants to take over the lease otherwise you'll need to purchase the system (or pay the company to remove the system if they dont allow you to purchase) in order to get out of the contract.
A good friend of ours is a realtor and has had 3 cases of this happening where potential buyers didnt want the system and the sellers had to continue looking for other buyers or bite the bullet and pay for the system outright.
Maybe some lease companies have realized that's bad PR and have changed that aspect of the contract but up to a year ago it was still the case with many of them.

Home next door had a leased system and the home went foreclosure... the system was quite large.

The buyers and the solar leasing company had a little stand-off but the buyer is a lawyer and got it all straightened out and the Solar Company made a very good offer as opposed to having an take out the system...

[Holly2019]

What size (Kw) is your solar?

[AndroidAZ]

Newbie post resurrecting an old thread?

3 reservations I have about solar in AZ:

1. nightmare story of buying a house with leased solar

2. California has too much solar, that it pays other states like AZ to take their power

3. Don't install solar panels on older roofs

One major issue with Solar is energy storage for use when the sun is not in the sky producing energy. Battery storage and other storage costs are still pretty expensive, so the grid can't easily scale up and down with tons of solar power being produced during peak time and then not enough power during night time. That's why California can't store its excess solar power and has to pay other states to use up their excess energy or their grid will be overloaded.

Hopefully those will be worked out and solar will become more viable and cost effective in the future.

[wase4711]

1. dont buy a house with leased solar then; buy your own house and you become the owner.

2. No such thing as too much solar, especially in Arizona

3. of course you want to make sure your roof is in good condition when you install anything on it.

More often than not, the paper underneath the tiles needs to be changed out every 13-25 years so keep that in mind BEFORE you have panels installed.

When its sunny out, my panels produce 60kw per day; when its hazy out, they produce 50 kwh perday; when its cloudy out, they produce 25-40kwh per day. Aside from this time of year, once you stop running your AC 23 hours a day, your panels should produce at least as much as you are using a day, and hopefully more. The excess gets credited to your account to reduce next months bill, or, at the end of the year, you get a credit/check for what ever that amount is. In the summer I might use as much as 2000 kwh in a month; in the winter, it drops to around 500kwh, so that when you can really build up your electric "credits"

Many of the people that are not happy with their systems, more often than not, it is because their systems were undersized from the beginning, so they never produced enough energy to offset the monthly "cost" of having solar.

APS has made it less attractive to have solar over the last 5 years, but you still save $$ by having it, if its installed and sized properly.

[Potential_Landlord]

There is a difference between individual benefits and public costs with solar. At its core solar a scheme to have the poor pay the electric bills of the rich. Poor renters cannot install / have solar but get hit by higher electric rates due to solar. Rich(er) home owners can install solar, reap a hefty tax credit and can abuse the grid as a battery by offsetting expensive summer power with cheap and abundant winter power. The power companies have higher production costs in the summer in general, and the heat peak spikes in particular. They also have additional costs in so far as the solar production curve and the demand curve are not equal (solar production falls off earlier in the day as demand still rises). Lastly, the biggest joke is that solar panels lose efficiency most during the monsoon when demand is at its peak - higher humidity disperses sunlight and more cloud cover. So in July/August we get less solar production - when we need it most. But we have plenty in the winter when nobody needs it. So let's be honest about solar - it is a scheme to make the poor pay the rich(er) people's power bills. I have a solar system too.

[Bill the Butcher]

Originally Posted by asufan

Many people actually don't buy houses with solar panels because they look ugly.

I know this is an old thread but it's still relevant today.

The reason why we passed on a house with a solar lease was not because we didn't like the look of the panels on the house. It was because we ultimately wanted to have a solar system that we owned. Owning the solar system gives the homeowner the maximum amount of savings vs leasing. And the second reason was that the lease and the system were not very good. The house still had an annual True Up bill of about $2,500. It appeared the system was undersized. We wanted to buy a house we could live in for a year and determine our actual usage and have a system built for our usage.

[wase4711]

Originally Posted by Bill the Butcher

I know this is an old thread but it's still relevant today.

The reason why we passed on a house with a solar lease was not because we didn't like the look of the panels on the house. It was because we ultimately wanted to have a solar system that we owned. Owning the solar system gives the homeowner the maximum amount of savings vs leasing. And the second reason was that the lease and the system were not very good. The house still had an annual True Up bill of about $2,500. It appeared the system was undersized. We wanted to buy a house we could live in for a year and determine our actual usage and have a system built for our usage.

very smart of you to see what your usage actually is for 12 months, before getting solar installed; at first I was mad that APS would NOT give us the last 12 months of electricity use at the house we bought when we first moved here, but I am glad they didnt, as our electricity useage was probably nothing like the previous owners use

We sized our system, to 115% of our previous years useage, so slightly over producing helps us have a "bank" that we use to pay the monthly BS fees that APS punishes Solar users with..
Even so, we save about 200 per month this time of year on our electric bills by having solar, so we are big fans, in spite of how APS is trying to make it harder for people to go solar now..Big tax break made it nice too!

[Bill the Butcher]

Originally Posted by wase4711

very smart of you to see what your usage actually is for 12 months, before getting solar installed; at first I was mad that APS would NOT give us the last 12 months of electricity use at the house we bought when we first moved here, but I am glad they didnt, as our electricity useage was probably nothing like the previous owners use

We sized our system, to 115% of our previous years useage, so slightly over producing helps us have a "bank" that we use to pay the monthly BS fees that APS punishes Solar users with..
Even so, we save about 200 per month this time of year on our electric bills by having solar, so we are big fans, in spite of how APS is trying to make it harder for people to go solar now..Big tax break made it nice too!

I think it's good to size a system over 110%. After 10-15 years of degradation the system should still be putting out around 100-105%. Plus if you don't have an EV now, you might have one in the garage in 10-15 years.

We sized are system to 118%. We are in CA, and receive our power from PGE. Easily some of the highest electric rates in the nation. This is our first year with solar. Our July 2019 bill was $683 on 2,381 kwH just under 29 cents per kwH. Our July 2020 bill was $18. We paid for our solar with a second mortgage loan. The payment on our loan is $233 per month. It was about $350 but we put the entirety of our 30% tax credit back into the loan and lowered the payment.

So looks like even after paying the solar loan and the the $18 charge from the utility for this month we will be saving over $400 on our most recent bill compared to the same month bill one year ago.

[wase4711]

wow, I thought Arizona electric rates were high; yours are double..How sad..