Has anyone here heard of this? Supposedly, the company installs a solar power system on your home, with almost no up-front cost. There is a 25-year lease that costs the same as what you are paying now for electricity. The current rate is locked in, so your electric rates would not go up in the future. I'd be interested to know if anyone has any experience with the company, or with any similar system. It sounds interesting to me, but at the same time I have that feeling, you know, if it sounds too good to be true . . .
I agree that it sounds too good, especially givne the solar potential here in this area is not the best.
http://www.solarbuzz.com/Consumer/Payback.htm http://www.ongrid.net/payback/index.html http://www.carolinacountry.com/storypages/howtos/homeenergy/solar.html
Thanks a lot for this, Wayne. It looks like solar hot water would be a lot more "doable" than whole house solar. With a few lifestyle changes (e.g., showering in the afternoon-evening instead of first thing in the morning) it might work out all right. It's something to think about, anyway. The link I gave above is a lease arrangement, so you don't pay that high up-front cost, but you never own the system. I expect you would pay a lot more over the 25 years of the lease than the initial cost would be for installing your own system. It might be more sensible to purchase a system rather than lease.
Yes, but the "deal" on the lease did not seem Kosher given the payback period for the equipment. They were holding the cost firm for the length of the lease for your electric usage, which means in the short term they were taking the tax breaks and making back all of the power generated. The payback period for a house in NC could approach the length of the lease so the tax breaks would be their only profit less the increase in power costs over the term since that was held firm. This is very crude calculations, to be sure, but for such a long term investment the return does not appear to be what any normal investor would choose. Say, if they also built the equipment and that is part of their return there might be an "above board" reason but it seems more likely this is a deal which is not that "above board". As you said it sounds too good to be true and deals like that generally are not true.
I believe there is a group of homes in Chatham County near Chapel Hill which are using a lot of solar and other energy savign construction methods. I seem to remember reading an article about the development a while back. A friend of mine was gearng up for such a development a few years back, but burned out after his third one and his private residence was compleated. He could have gons on but he had alienated every major subcontractor around by that time. He was a very picky man. A PhD in nuclear physics and expected "subatomic" tolerances. He allowed half the industry norm for framing tolerance and had the trm in his house in Governor's Club replaced three times before the sub refused to do it any more. He had not put heat in the house yet and the variations in temperature caused un acceptable "gaps" in the unfinished trim. The few other houses he built (some lots were just sold or the owners used their own general contractor) were the best you could hope for in qualtity though. I think there is a new "green" development being reviewed for in town Chapel Hill too. I remember hearing about the use of rain water for the toilet system, whcih is something I tried to get the company for which I worked to install some 25 years ago, and for which they would have more than recovered their costs before I quit them and moved here.
what kind of solar energy stuff can people use now? We are building a house and solar power panels going in now would probably be cheaper than if we come back later after the house is built... True?
