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?
If it’s anything like the solar panel leasing scams in the US the downsides would be:
- the panels are low quality/old tech, not something you would end up with if you were buying them yourselves
- the contract covers your house, not yourself. So to sell you must get the new owners to accept the contract or pay for the panels outright first
- low quality installation that will likely degrade the roof integrity
- sneaky fine print where they can extract money out of you in various situations like maintenance
- absolutely no concern for viability of placement, installing panels where it doesn’t make sense. The focus is on installing the maximum number of panels so they get the most money
That’s definitely the problems with these contractors in the US. Might be different or actually legit elsewhere, but it’s a common “scam” for the last year or two and has boned a lot of people. IIRC it usually costs $20-30k to get rid of them or buy everything out to sell your house. Fine print!
It smells to me like ‘you’ll own nothing and be happy’. Someone founded a company on the idea of ‘People have a good thing going, how could we exploit it?’
What happens when you want to exit the contract within the 30 years?
What if you want to sell the house, and the new owner doesn’t want this scheme? Do the panels move with you to the new place? Depending on how hard it is to get out of the contract, it may turn away potential buyers.
Lastly, I may be distrustful of every company, but… When the sun is shining at peak brightness, what’s the guarantee that you get to use all of it? Surely there’s some clever ‘load balancing’ programmed into that inverter… You will never know for sure, it’s not yours.
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.
PV should only cost around ~€60, correct?
So yes, but the whole system requires labor and different accessories to set up. I’d assume 200$ each for mounting parts and labour and interconnect parts and labour. Do they charge separately for the switch to the grid and other things, or does that 850 per panel include the rest of the stuff?
It seems high, I would expect 4-6x the cost of an individual feature for turnkey projects, but then again I’m not in PV construction, I’m in security systems, and I’m in Canada not Europe.
What happens when the company goes bankrupt before the 30 years?
I can only guess. I don’t think that could even be in contract. My guess:
- another company buys it: the buyer takes over the contracts
- liquidation: normally assets go to the creditors. But every homeowner is a creditor for the property in the future. So I think a reasonable court would just turn ownership over to the homeowner. OTOH, the energy company is also a party to the deal because the energy supplier gets the unused power. Perhaps the panels would be taken over by the energy supplier until the 30 year mark.
Where?
The cost of installation, wiring and transformers is more than the cost of panels.
After the 30 years of “borrowing” the panels, who pays for their removal and recycling?
The cost of installation, wiring and transformers is more than the cost of panels.
They likely factor all those costs into the panel costs. But would labor and parts overhead represent 9/10ths of €8500, for example? Looks like they install 3 boxes in the basement plus panels for around €7500.
That may be where the fat is. So I’m tempted to say this is only a good deal for someone who really wants hands-off on-grid solar power for 30 yrs. And perhaps a bad deal if someone foresees going off grid and doing their own labor.
After the 30 years of “borrowing” the panels, who pays for their removal and recycling?
I assume that’s the homeowner because the supplier simply makes it all the homeowner’s property after 30 years… likely so they don’t have to deal with it.
