Solar: Is It Worth It? (rental, how much, house)

[Sno0909]

So I'm looking to purchase a home and think I've found the one; however, it has solar that is leased. I've never been a fan of solar, even though I do understand some of the benefits. That being said, I don't really know a whole lot about it.

Here is the payment schedule attached to the lease:



Does this look reasonable? How much would I expect to pay the utility company, in addition to the solar lease? This is for a 2,600 sq ft home.

I feel like people that I know that have solar either hate it or love it. Some people say they got screwed and others say they barely pay anything. I respect all of your opinions. Thanks.

[DetroitN8V]

It’s just math but you need to know the size of the system and what it produces monthly. Come back with that info and it will be easy to figure the ROI. Also, what happens at the end of the lease term?

[Sno0909]

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End of lease you can either renew the lease or they will remove the system. There is no purchase option. It's with SolarCity (aka Tesla).

[DetroitN8V]

It looks like they guarantee a certain level of production. What does the guaranteed price refer to?

[wase4711]

it would help as well if you could get the history of the electric bills/useage at that house, to get a rough idea of how much the location used monthly in the past/what their previous bills for APS were, to see if you would actually save any money with solar..

generally speaking, taking over someone else's lease on solar is not viewed by most "experts" as a good thing to do..

[AZ Manager]

Is the home net metered? How many years into the lease is it? Can you qualify for the additional debt to income? How much electricity do you use a year? Is the home more or less energy efficient than your current house?

So that system produces less than 15k kWh a year. APS is anywhere between $0.13-$0.15 a kWh so 15k kWh at $0.15/kWh you would pay APS $2,250 a year or $187.50 a month. At $0.13/kWh you would pay APS $1,950 a year or $162.50 a month. Remember that you will still have an APS bill and that bill could be as low as $18 a month (depends on total system size but based on the production numbers it should be around there give or take) with no real upper limit.

I'd never take over someone else's lease for a number of reasons but the biggest one for me is you can buy a much larger solar system today and get it for much, MUCH cheaper than what they paid for it. My system I paid in cash for but if I would have financed it it would have been $25k in May of 2017 and $16.5k after state/fed rebates. If I financed $16.5k over 20 years that would have been a monthly payment of about $112 (fixed for 20 years) for a solar system that produces 18k kWh or so a year. My last bill for the year is next month but so far I've paid APS about $250 this year and I expect my next bill to be around $10.

I've seen a lot of really bad leases attached to some nice homes over the last few years as I'm searching for my next rental property purchase. It's hard to say on this one if it's a good one or a bad one without all of the info but from the looks of it, it's not great.

[motormaker]

Wasn't HX_Guy into solar and had lots of info. Haven't seen in posting lately.

[Sno0909]

Thanks. I just don't feel comfortable taking over someone else's lease. All of this just doesn't seem worth it to me.

[Kate2345]

It goes UP over time? I’m not even going to do any math. Huge no for me.

[wase4711]

a few years ago, before the current board was put in place here, solar was a pretty good idea, especially if you were young enough to realize the great cost savings down the road.
all that changed a year or 2 ago, and APS and their hand picked Comissioners, who decide things like rates, and pricing, decided to make it alot less advantageous to use solar, so here we are today..

EVERY single family house in the state should have a reasonable and affordable way to go solar; I mean, its sunny about 90%+ of the days out here, but, when politicians and lobbyists collide, consumers pay the price..

No solar for me at this point either..