A deal being offered in my area is:

  • they cover the roof with insured PVs, which remain the property of the supplier for 30 years. The supplier installs and maintains them at no cost. They repair any damage. Homeowner pays absolutely nothing.
  • no batteries. Homeowner’s consumption is gratis when the sun is hitting. Any unused energy goes back to the grid.
  • homeowner gets no credit for what goes back to the grid, but they still benefit from free energy they consume when the sun is out and ultimately a reduced energy bill.
  • after 30 years, the panels and everything become the homeowner’s property. (The panels are likely worthless at that age anyway)
  • if the roof needs to be renovated in the future, the supplier removes the panels and reinstalls them at no cost, but the homeowner will have some fees for things like scaffolding.

The supplier profits from some kind of green certificates from the gov.

Seems like a no-brainer, on the edge of too good to be true. So I’m trying to decompose this to look for traps and anti-features.

It seems to boil down to homeowners trade roof space for energy in return. 30 year contract.

It complicates any plans to go off-grid. A homeowner can buy the PVs at a price that decreases every 5 years, starting at €850 each in the 1st year. So €8500 for 10 panels. Then they can exit the contract and go off-grid in the first 5 years for that price. That price is where the deal seems a bit sour. A PV should only cost around ~€60, correct? Isn’t €850 an extortionate price for a PV? If someone knows they want to go off-grid in the future, I get the impression they’re better off rejecting this deal and buying their own panels.

They install a few different meters. So I wonder if it’s really just fancy metering. E.g. wouldn’t it make sense to feed all solar power into the grid, then just pause or offset the homeowner’s meter for energy they consume from the grid while feeding the grid?

  • activistPnk@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
    6·
    9 days ago

    What if you want to sell the house

    I’ve not read the contract yet. Considering they include removal an reinstallation labor for free if someone renovates their roof, they theoretically might as well relocate them to another house when moving within their service area (which is constrained as well by the region of the green certificates).

    What happens when you want to exit the contract within the 30 years?

    Certainly you can buy the gear. And if you buy all the panels you are out of the contract. Price per panel as they age is something like this:

    • years 0-5: €850
    • years 5-10: €750
    • years 10-15: €650
    • …
    • year 30: €0

    If you want to exit the contract and return the panels, I have no idea. But since these prices seem to be heavily inflated to cover their labor, I imagine it’s quite uninteresting to return the panels because they likely factor in the labor.

    When the sun is shining at peak brightness, what’s the guarantee that you get to use all of it?

    All the boxes have LCDs. The 1st box shows the power generation. Then another box shows what of that you are consuming. I don’t recall what the 3rd box shows but I can only imagine it’s the energy fed to the grid. I assume the original electric meter is still installed, in which case it might be possible to check the math.

    There could still be shenanigans because it’s probably hard to verify. I think as a low consumer I might be better off buying the panels and getting an i/o meter (not sure what the correct term is but something that compensates me for what is fed back to the grid).

    Anyway, I appreciate the reply. I’ll have to mirror some of those questions to the supplier.