Hi all, I looked into going with Vivint or Solar city for a 20 year lease option a few years back, but ultimately decided against it. These were my reasons, some of which were already mentioned above:
- The cost of the system was exorbitant... basically they were playing with their numbers to max out the government incentives. There was no cost to me, but I also would not be benefiting from the incentives financially.
- They planned to raise rates every year according to a schedule, I.e. regardless of what market conditions are. In my projections, my energy costs would exceed the costs of staying with my local utility after about 5-7 years.
- They would have the right to use my roof FOR FREE for 20 years, but my energy would not be free and I would have no ownership of the system. Quite the opposite... any extra electricity generated on my roof would not belong to me, and instead would be used to make them more money... So my roof becomes their free power plant, for 20 years...
- The 20 year catch as described above, especially issues related to trying to sell the home in the future if buyers did not want to be locked into steadily increasing electricity rates year after year.
- Bottom line, my recommendation, in line with others above, if you can afford to buy the system outright, do that. Don’t however buy it outright from one of the above companies whose business is leasing systems. You will pay at least double what you would pay another company to install a turnkey system.
