Increase ROI with Solar Power?

[John Berekoff]

So I had this idea the other day and wanted to know what others thought. 

If you place solar panels on a property of yours, and pay them off (or buy them outright) so that all of the energy savings coming from them are not going to making lease payments, would you be able to somehow meter the tenants and charge them the market rate for the electricity being used, keeping the difference as profit?

Keep in mind this is assuming that the panels were actually efficiently producing electricity and significantly reducing the cost of power (solar panels are not always that good at reducing costs in some situations, but for this particular theoretical lets assume they are 100% efficient).

Is anybody doing this? Is it even legal? Or is it just some silly thing I thought of while I was bored? lol 

What do you guys think?

[Andrew Smith]

Originally posted by @John Berekoff:

So I had this idea the other day and wanted to know what others thought. 

If you place solar panels on a property of yours, and pay them off (or buy them outright) so that all of the energy savings coming from them are not going to making lease payments, would you be able to somehow meter the tenants and charge them the market rate for the electricity being used, keeping the difference as profit?

Keep in mind this is assuming that the panels were actually efficiently producing electricity and significantly reducing the cost of power (solar panels are not always that good at reducing costs in some situations, but for this particular theoretical lets assume they are 100% efficient).

Is anybody doing this? Is it even legal? Or is it just some silly thing I thought of while I was bored? lol 

What do you guys think?

 The short answer is yes you can sell power to your tenants. Most tenants are paying their own power separate to the home lease. In those scenarios you cannot force a tenant to pay for the solar system but you can ask them to sign a lease addendum. Why would they? Well if you can offer a scenario where they are saving 10-20% then it's attractive to them. You can of course put that in the lease for new tenants.
You can charge what the utility would be charging. This means you need a monitoring system which are really inexpensive. The tenant would still be connected to the utility and would then receive 2 bills. One from the utility and one from you. Again their incentive is that you are offering them a discount overall. Your incentive is that others are paying for your home improvement and value add of solar panels. You could review their usage annually to determine the monthly bill amount going forward. When the panels are paid off, that's an even higher income stream.
Another way would be to offer new tenants "free electric" with a higher lease payment. You would need to have a "reasonable use" clause so that they remain on the hook for any excess power that is purchased from the utility.