Solar Panels on Rentals

[Kyle Neumeier]

I've been following the podcasts and reading some books but I've never heard of anyone putting solar panels on a rental, why is this? I did a BiggerPockets search and found a few year old post saying submetering is great. There seems to be good financing and incentives to put solar panels on, why am I not hearing about people doing this?

[Nathan Gesner]

It doesn't make sense. Let's say you pay $15,000 to put solar in the house. Who benefits? The renter. They're the one's paying the electric bill so they get cheap/free electric and you've paid $15,000 to make their life easy.

Even with tax credits, the average home owner is going to wait 15 years to break even with a solar power system. That's just to break even and it doesn't take into consideration maintenance, battery replacement, and other issues that can change during that time.

Solar power is to help people feel good about their environmental footprint and is not what I consider a good investment. Even the environmental impact is questionable when you consider materials used, how those materials are collected, the manufacturing process, transportation and installation, batteries, etc. On the other hand, if you're in a heavily regulated state like California that pushes electric cars and then shuts your electricity off, maybe you want to be off the grid as much as possible.