Could America's Rooftop Solar Industry Be On the Verge of Collapse? (time.com) 158
Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shared this investigation by Time magazine's senior economics correspondent which argues that America's residential solar industry "is floundering."
In late 2023 alone, more than 100 residential solar dealers and installers in the U.S. declared bankruptcy, according to Roth Capital Partners — six times the number in the previous three years combined. Roth expects at least 100 more to fail. The two largest companies in the industry, SunRun and Sunnova, both posted big losses in their most recent quarterly reports, and their shares are down 86% and 81% respectively from their peaks in January 2021... At the root of these struggles is the complicated financial engineering that helped companies raise money but that some investors and analysts say was built on a framework of lies — or at least exaggerations. Since at least 2016, big solar companies have used Wall Street money to fund their growth. This financialization raised the consumer cost of the panels and led companies to aggressively pursue sales to make the cost of borrowing Wall Street money worth it. National solar companies essentially became finance companies that happened to sell solar, engaging in calculations that may have been overly optimistic about how much money the solar leases and loans actually bring in.
"I've often heard solar finance and sales compared to the Wild West due to the creativity involved," says Jamie Johnson, the founder of Energy Sense Finance, who has been studying the residential solar industry for a decade. "It's the Silicon Valley mantra of 'break things and let the regulators figure it out.'"
Leasing the panels lets the companies claim green-energy tax credits (which they then sell to companies like Google). And meanwhile, bundles of solar-panel leases become asset-backed securities. By 2017, there were over $1 billion such securities... However, these financial innovations also increased the pressure on companies to grow quickly. Solar companies needed lots of new customers in order to package the loans into asset-backed securities and sell them to investors. Public companies especially faced intense scrutiny from investors who expected double-digit quarterly growth. And with upfront costs no longer a barrier for new customers, solar companies began to see almost every homeowner as a target, and they deployed expensive sales teams to go out and sell as aggressively as they could... Even today, about one-third of the upfront cost of a residential solar system goes to intermediaries like sales and financing people, says Pol Lezcano, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance. In Germany, where installation is done locally and there are fewer intermediaries, the typical residential system costs about 50% less than it costs in the U.S. "The upfront cost of these systems is stupidly high," says Lezcano, making residential solar not "scalable."
After growing 31% in 2021 and 40% in 2022, residential solar will only grow by 13% in 2023 and then contract 12% in 2024, according to predictions from the research firm Wood Mackenzie... Meanwhile, the pressure for fast sales may have led some companies to look the other way when salespeople obscured the terms of the solar panel leases and loans they were selling in order to close a deal.
One customer complains the solar panel company actually took out a lien on his house without his knowledge, according to the article. He's "one of a growing number of consumers now saying in courts and in arbitration that salesmen from solar-panel and solar-panel-finance companies — including some of the biggest in the U.S., like GoodLeap, Mosaic, Sunnova, and SunRun — tricked them into taking out onerous loans they didn't want — or that someone signed them up for a loan without their knowledge." Even some people who voluntarily signed up for financing products say they were misled about the actual cost of the solar panels. That's because loans from companies like GoodLeap and Mosaic often include an unexplained and significant "dealer fee." For example, a customer buying a $30,000 solar panel system with a low interest rate may not know that price includes a $10,000 loan-dealer fee. In other words, the cost of the panels, had they paid cash, would have been just $20,000; the extra 30% is the price they paid for the low-interest loan, though many consumers allege this was not explained to them...
In some ways, the current situation in the residential solar market is analogous to the subprime lending crisis that set off the Great Recession, though on a smaller scale. Like in the subprime lending crisis, some companies issued loans to people who could not — or would not — pay them. Like in the subprime lending crisis, thousands of these loans — and in solar's case, also leases — were packaged and sold to investors as asset-backed securities with promised rates of return. The Great Recession was driven largely by the fact that people stopped paying their loans, and the asset-backed securities didn't deliver the promised rate of return to investors. Similar cracks may be forming in the solar asset-backed securities market. For instance, the rate of delinquencies of loans in one of Sunnova's asset-backed securities was approaching 5% in the fall of last year, according to an October 2023 report issued by KBRA, a bond ratings agency. Historically, delinquencies in solar asset-backed securities had been around 1%.
The firms that grade these asset-backed securities have long said delinquencies would be low because rooftop-solar customers had high credit scores. The problem is that they appear not to have considered that even customers with good credit scores may not want to pay for solar panels that they were told would be free — or that salesmen could be signing people up without their knowledge.
Besides consumer cases in court, there's the possibility that regulators may act against solar companies that used inflated projections to juice their tax credits. "As early as 2016, a researcher at MIT's Energy Initiative estimated that such companies were overstating this value by as much as 50%." The broad problems facing residential solar and financing companies are already causing some pain in the forms of layoffs — California alone lost 17,000 solar jobs in 2023, according to the California Solar and Storage Association. There are ripple effects in the industry; Enphase Energy, which makes microinverters for solar panels, said in December it was laying off 10% of its workforce amidst softening demand.
It could get a lot worse before it gets better, with not just lost jobs, but near-total collapse of the current system. Some analysts, like Lezcano of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, think that the big, national players are going to have to fall apart for residential solar to become affordable in the U.S., and that in the future, the solar industry in the U.S. will look more like it does in Germany, where installations are done locally and there's fewer door-to-door sales.
"Over the past few years, a handful of people got rich off of Americans who were told they could simultaneously save money and save the planet. For example, Hayes Barnard, GoodLeap's founder and chairman, was named by Forbes as one of the 400 richest people in the world in 2023..."
"I've often heard solar finance and sales compared to the Wild West due to the creativity involved," says Jamie Johnson, the founder of Energy Sense Finance, who has been studying the residential solar industry for a decade. "It's the Silicon Valley mantra of 'break things and let the regulators figure it out.'"
Leasing the panels lets the companies claim green-energy tax credits (which they then sell to companies like Google). And meanwhile, bundles of solar-panel leases become asset-backed securities. By 2017, there were over $1 billion such securities... However, these financial innovations also increased the pressure on companies to grow quickly. Solar companies needed lots of new customers in order to package the loans into asset-backed securities and sell them to investors. Public companies especially faced intense scrutiny from investors who expected double-digit quarterly growth. And with upfront costs no longer a barrier for new customers, solar companies began to see almost every homeowner as a target, and they deployed expensive sales teams to go out and sell as aggressively as they could... Even today, about one-third of the upfront cost of a residential solar system goes to intermediaries like sales and financing people, says Pol Lezcano, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance. In Germany, where installation is done locally and there are fewer intermediaries, the typical residential system costs about 50% less than it costs in the U.S. "The upfront cost of these systems is stupidly high," says Lezcano, making residential solar not "scalable."
After growing 31% in 2021 and 40% in 2022, residential solar will only grow by 13% in 2023 and then contract 12% in 2024, according to predictions from the research firm Wood Mackenzie... Meanwhile, the pressure for fast sales may have led some companies to look the other way when salespeople obscured the terms of the solar panel leases and loans they were selling in order to close a deal.
One customer complains the solar panel company actually took out a lien on his house without his knowledge, according to the article. He's "one of a growing number of consumers now saying in courts and in arbitration that salesmen from solar-panel and solar-panel-finance companies — including some of the biggest in the U.S., like GoodLeap, Mosaic, Sunnova, and SunRun — tricked them into taking out onerous loans they didn't want — or that someone signed them up for a loan without their knowledge." Even some people who voluntarily signed up for financing products say they were misled about the actual cost of the solar panels. That's because loans from companies like GoodLeap and Mosaic often include an unexplained and significant "dealer fee." For example, a customer buying a $30,000 solar panel system with a low interest rate may not know that price includes a $10,000 loan-dealer fee. In other words, the cost of the panels, had they paid cash, would have been just $20,000; the extra 30% is the price they paid for the low-interest loan, though many consumers allege this was not explained to them...
In some ways, the current situation in the residential solar market is analogous to the subprime lending crisis that set off the Great Recession, though on a smaller scale. Like in the subprime lending crisis, some companies issued loans to people who could not — or would not — pay them. Like in the subprime lending crisis, thousands of these loans — and in solar's case, also leases — were packaged and sold to investors as asset-backed securities with promised rates of return. The Great Recession was driven largely by the fact that people stopped paying their loans, and the asset-backed securities didn't deliver the promised rate of return to investors. Similar cracks may be forming in the solar asset-backed securities market. For instance, the rate of delinquencies of loans in one of Sunnova's asset-backed securities was approaching 5% in the fall of last year, according to an October 2023 report issued by KBRA, a bond ratings agency. Historically, delinquencies in solar asset-backed securities had been around 1%.
The firms that grade these asset-backed securities have long said delinquencies would be low because rooftop-solar customers had high credit scores. The problem is that they appear not to have considered that even customers with good credit scores may not want to pay for solar panels that they were told would be free — or that salesmen could be signing people up without their knowledge.
Besides consumer cases in court, there's the possibility that regulators may act against solar companies that used inflated projections to juice their tax credits. "As early as 2016, a researcher at MIT's Energy Initiative estimated that such companies were overstating this value by as much as 50%." The broad problems facing residential solar and financing companies are already causing some pain in the forms of layoffs — California alone lost 17,000 solar jobs in 2023, according to the California Solar and Storage Association. There are ripple effects in the industry; Enphase Energy, which makes microinverters for solar panels, said in December it was laying off 10% of its workforce amidst softening demand.
It could get a lot worse before it gets better, with not just lost jobs, but near-total collapse of the current system. Some analysts, like Lezcano of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, think that the big, national players are going to have to fall apart for residential solar to become affordable in the U.S., and that in the future, the solar industry in the U.S. will look more like it does in Germany, where installations are done locally and there's fewer door-to-door sales.
"Over the past few years, a handful of people got rich off of Americans who were told they could simultaneously save money and save the planet. For example, Hayes Barnard, GoodLeap's founder and chairman, was named by Forbes as one of the 400 richest people in the world in 2023..."
I expect a lot of it was basically fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Government subsidy, money to be made for free!
Maybe you're seeing a shaking out of the ones who were just trying to grab as much free money as possible and never really had a solid business.
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Indeed, I suspect there are a bunch of scammers in the "green" energy industry and probably people who don't know better as well.
Re:I expect a lot of it was basically fraud (Score:5, Informative)
It's simpler than that.
Fraud and "fly by night" companies are commonplace in the entire housing industry. They go "bankrupt" (after big payouts to the owner) faster than restaurants, then the owner makes a new company, sells the "assets" and licensure to the new company, lather rinse repeat. The structure allows the fake "new" company to avoid having to fulfill its warranty obligations.
It's a late-stage capitalism thing.
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> It's a late-stage capitalism thing
This is one of the stupidest phrases. Didn't this go out of fad in 2023?
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Indeed, I suspect there are a bunch of scammers in the "green" energy industry and probably people who don't know better as well.
My phone number must have got on some list because I get phone calls all the time from people trying to sell me solar panels. Sometimes several calls per day. Are others getting these phone calls? The names of the companies are all very generic, sometimes trying to sound like some government agency, offering to sell me solar panels. Many will start the call telling me that they are selling nothing, only "offering information" or something.
I haven't had anyone knock on my door yet to sell me solar panels
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Imagine having your 401k invested in green energy.. suckers!
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Obvious problem being that such actors kill those that don't do those things before going out themselves.
Causing an industry-wide collapse.
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There's a ton of fraud in the solar industry.
The biggest fraud is the whole "lease your roof" concept where you can get a solar panel on your roof for a really low price - because you're paying inflated electric prices. As in the company installs and subsidizes the solar panel install, and collects the money for the electricity your system exports. You basically pay for that power, hopefully at a lower rate than your present electric bill, but often not.
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Doesn't always have to be fraud - when Fed rates went to 0% a lot of stuff made sense. Had i gotten around to getting Solar while the rates where that low i would have likely pulled the trigger. But when i did get around to it and rates where near 5% the total cost of the loan was 2x the base cost over it's life and it no longer made economical sense..
Now from that process, i will say what was borderline fraud was the estimator's numbers for "future" savings.. trying to include a deferred power cost with a
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No, that is not true. If everyone has solar panels, you pay a high price to dump excess energy when the sun is at its highest. Then at night, or during winter, you pay a high price to get power as nobody is producing. Or do you have a wind and battery farm? Thought so. It's a lose-lose for consumers. This is just a ploy to make people pay through their noses for free energy.
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Agreed, during the night the energy needs to come from somewhere else. Either conventional power plants that now need to get their install costs back over less production time (incurring higher costs), or with a home battery. I don't know about you, but in summer, when I'm not heating, a 10 kWh battery is suffi
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I don't about the US, but a 10 kWh battery is over $10K in Canada. Just the battery, not installation or charge controllers or whatever else you need.
Long story short... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Long story short... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know for sure I would never do business with somebody who comes to my door and is pushing some financial scheme for anything... not kitchen cutlery, not life insurance, not pest control, not solar panels.
I do have my doubts about whether rooftop solar makes financial sense, compared to huge professionally run solar fields at ground level.
I bet it would pay off if you do the install yourself though. My daughter is in trade school to become an electrician so I'm waiting for that.
Re:Long story short... (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in the south, over 2,600 Sun hours per year. A/C country.
I looked into this Conclusion: by the time the cost would be amortized, the panels are shot and need to be replaced â"Âif I calculated optimistically. Much, much worse when adding electricity storage. Plus I would have to cut down all trees and take the shade away from my house/property. Made no sense, logically and financially
I did have a solar installer at the house once, and he concurred. And I have a totally average house for where I live, nothing fancy (in terms of insulation etc.).
So I am dismayed, but I am not surprised to find out that a good technology has been trashified this way.
I run my garden shed on solar. And when the power goes out, I have a backup area that is easily cooled/heated. Better use of my money.
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I run my garden shed on solar.
I had an acquaintance ask my opinion once about running a cattle confinement building off solar power since he knew I took some classes on power while at university. Knowing what I did I suggested he consider wind power instead, windmills are cheap and simple. A few days later he appeared quite enthusiastic about a windmill on this cattle shed so apparently he asked around for quotes on making that work and found it cheaper. That was some time ago so maybe the prices shifted some but I see a lot of windm
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The thing is that both wind and solar are fairly fast-moving technologies, so you need to re-run the numbers every couple of years. Solar panel costs per unit of energy have been falling much faster than wind power costs.
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The thing is that both wind and solar are fairly fast-moving technologies, so you need to re-run the numbers every couple of years. Solar panel costs per unit of energy have been falling much faster than wind power costs.
It would be nice if you would provide a link to where everyone could find recent and reliable numbers on how solar and wind compare, as well as some historical numbers to show how quickly both are changing. I'm in the Midwest USA but numbers for any location would be helpful.
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I'm in the south, also. For my situation, panels+storage pays for itself before the panels die. At current electricity rates.
But rates are extremely unlikely to remain where they are and zero likely to drop in price over time.
Even a relatively small 10-20% price increase over time makes my system pay for itself welllllll before the panels die or batteries wear down.
Now then, there's also the idea of if I didn't put that money into solar but instead invested it would I have been better off paying the elect
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But rates are extremely unlikely to remain where they are and zero likely to drop in price over time.
How does that work? If solar plus storage is so cheap then what keeps a utility from doing solar plus storage and make up for their added overhead with economy of scale?
Maybe it is unlikely for utility prices to go down but I doubt the chances are zero. You get whatever sun you can get on your property but with a utility they can use cheaper land, more optimal placement of the panels, lower recurring costs like insurance because they are a bigger customer, and so on. There's an unavoidable overhead cost
Re: Long story short... (Score:2)
If solar plus storage is so cheap then what keeps a utility from doing solar plus storage and make up for their added overhead with economy of scale?
Because space with sunlight is "free" at your home, not at the utility. And if they try to reduce land prices by going father from civilization, their transmission losses increase a lot. The transmission losses are negligible within your property.
Homes of people have a reverse economy of scale here.
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I live in the New Orleans area, so, I know about about these storms you speak of....
I've long wondered about this in the solar arguments.
I would have thought during these storms with t
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Have yourself a GREAT day!
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In Texas the payback time of a solar installation is around 24 years. Most solar panels have a 25 year or better warranty, so it's unfair to say they would need to be replaced at that point.
You also have to consider the benefits of having your own solar system, particularly in a state where they can't keep the electricity on all year round.
The payback time goes down if you use more energy too, e.g. because you have an EV.
That said, right now a better investment to save money would probably be to improve you
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You also have to consider the benefits of having your own solar system, particularly in a state where they can't keep the electricity on all year round.
The vast majority of systems are AC coupled without ESS. When the grid goes down so does solar.
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Which is odd, because it's not much more expensive to have a system capable of isolating itself when the grid goes down. Maybe it's a regulatory issue in Texas.
I don't understand what would make anyone believe that.
The reality is adding ESS significantly increases system cost. You not only require a large inverter/charger with a transfer function capable of handling loads for the whole house you need a battery bank and compliance with a raft of electrical codes including external shutoff for the ESS.
Depending on capacity compliance with fire detection and suppression is also mandatory. While there are some hybrid inverters on the market that will output AC volta
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You don't need an inverter sized for the whole house. You select the important circuits like fridge and lights, and exclude the others. They auto shut down if you exceed the maximum current anyway.
When I said "You not only require a large inverter/charger with a transfer function capable of handling loads for the whole house" I was speaking of the ampacity of the transfer/pass thru circuit in the inverter not the capacity of the inverter itself. It obviously isn't remotely credible to size inverters to handle all loads without mains.
You can also separately install manual transfer switches for critical loads but this adds at least another grand and raises operational complexity for the customer and s
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I do have my doubts about whether rooftop solar makes financial sense, compared to huge professionally run solar fields at ground level.
There's studies that come out every year that show residential rooftop solar costs something like double to triple that of fixed axis ground level utility scale solar PV. I know people don't like Wikipedia, or like the annual Lazard reports on LCOE that's on the Wikipedia page (for some reason I don't quite understand yet) but it's a quick and easy place to at least get a general idea on the relative costs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Older studies, from something like 10 or 15 years ago, show the co
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As I recall, Lazard tells you the cost of a power plant but (i) excludes the cost of transmission lines (more of which have to be built for spread-out renewables than more concentrated forms of energy), and (ii) it does not tell you the value of energy. Because energy must be sold in the same moment it is generated, the value of solar and wind will decrease as time goes on because e.g. solar
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I don't necessarily agree with that. There is a tremendous overhead in paying other people to do things. Let's say a guy will do a job for $50. To pay him, I have to make $250, to take home $175, to pay $175 to his employer so they can pay him $75, so he can take home the $50.
To be worth it, the productivity increase from him having the expertise and professional equipment has to be very large.
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This seems a bit confusing, and makes it seem like there's excessive greed. So I'll try.
Okay, let's say that a "guy" will do Job X for $50. That's his pay, but he's an employee. That means he needs healthcare, retirement benefits, education coverage, insurance (liability and accident), etc... He needs tools, a place to store the tools and parts, a truck or van to move the tools and parts, and more. There're taxes that have to be paid for his labor (FICA), as well as everything else
On average, this work
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I'm willing to believe the premise of the article after the subprime crisis and having seen these sales people in Costco and Home Depot for years.
but the "long story" of the article in the end shows that the main illustrating example is basically a lie ..
Hernandez’s son answered the door and told the salesman that the family already had 68 non-working panels on the roof and that they were in the process of suing the installer...
uhh... why aren't their panels working? that had nothing to do with securitization and Wall Street. thousands (?) of words earlier they'd said in passing that Hernandez was still paying the same $500 a month for power, not the $50 he was promised... but d
Tricked into taking out a loan they didnd't want?? (Score:2)
GoodLeap, Mosaic, Sunnova, and SunRun â" tricked them into taking out onerous loans they didn't want â" or that someone signed them up for a loan without their knowledge.
Yeah, for the latter case, forging documents to take out a loan in the name of somebody else is fraud.
But the former? I call BS. Nobody in his right mind who explicitely knows they don't want a loan will be convinced by any slick salesman to take out one. I'm not buying that. People who don't understand loans, elderly people with diminished mental faculties, perhaps. But responsible adults with a reasonable understanding of what a loan entails - and I expect most homeowners are in that category - know exact
Re:Tricked into taking out a loan they didnd't wan (Score:5, Informative)
I mostly agree but as someone in Florida I have had at least 2-3 dozen door knocking salesman pushing solar over the last couple years. Many claiming to be from (insert local power company here) so to give themselves an heir of authority. They are pushy and they will make promises.
The schemes they try and push usually involve promising a loan you'll never have to make payments on (it pays for itself in savings!) Or no down payments, promises of subsidies. I usually took it as a bit of a challenge to be a dick (I always ask them if it's all free who is paying you to knock on my door? How do you make money?). They are very much in the realm of high pressure used car sales.
Even smart people are able to be conned as history has shown us time and time and time again.
They are desperate to sell even in Germany (Score:4, Funny)
So not about technology (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So not about technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: So not about technology (Score:2)
You can take a look at Europe to see if it makes sense and what the future holds. They are a few years ahead, more aggressive on subsidies etc. Now, not only is the government no longer paying for the energy you put back, cutting out a great deal of your ROI, they are introducing taxes and transport fees on the energy you produce in excess. In France they even force the nuclear plants to scale down every time (increasing the low costs of nuclear energy) whenever there is excess solar/wind just to make the c
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I suspect we may see limits on feed in or new co
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The simple one is battery storage in home, storing power before it is even feed to the grid. I have a couple of Tesla Powerwall batteries. The catch is they are expensive so make the ROI much longer than just solar alone. In my case there was other factors that made the investment justifiable, but for most people it would probably be a cost too far. However as battery prices continue to fall this could become a more
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So, not the "solar industry" then. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can put on panels, save money on electricity, pay off the panels, then the "solar industry" is fine. Just as "build a house, sell for more than it cost to build" remained a solid industry before and after 2008. It was the FINANCIALIZATION scheme built upon those sold, real-life, industries that fell over - just like 2008, most likely. I'm sure a lot of lying was involved, again.
Re: So, not the "solar industry" then. (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is exactly the financing of the thing. You get government subsidies for installing the panels regardless of whether it makes financial sense, however the capital costs and payback of these things is so high that people canâ(TM)t or wonâ(TM)t do it voluntary. So investment firms bankrolled people and businesses to put up panels with expectations of payback if energy costs rises. The problem is that energy cost didnâ(TM)t rise, the cost per kWh of solar rose significantly, solar pan
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Yeah, the "incentives" are just yet another way to transfer value from the middle class to the wealthy and banksters.
Same as every other scheme of its kind.
Even if Average Joe sees a benefit in a decade he has an encumbered deed to deal with which can cost him more on net.
I'm just buying panels on Amazon and battery cables at Walmart and going slow. But I guess I don't care about virtue signaling at all.
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If you can put on panels, save money on electricity, pay off the panels, then the "solar industry" is fine. Just as "build a house, sell for more than it cost to build" remained a solid industry before and after 2008.
This is how it works in Australia, and it's working fine. Solar is much cheaper here to install though, my 12kW system with 10kW inverter was about $16k after government rebate (a few $k) - which the installers manage for you and you don't do or see anything related.
Government subsidies also support low % loans (3% currently) for 100% of the solar install cost, and my electricity savings from solar are well above what the solar loan is costing per month.
It was the FINANCIALIZATION scheme built upon those sold, real-life, industries that fell over - just like 2008, most likely. I'm sure a lot of lying was involved, again.
USA financial regulations seem to have a lot more len
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If you can put on panels, save money on electricity, pay off the panels
Right now, even if you can pay cash, solar panels are not a good investment for residential consumers. The subsidies are too low and the returns for other investments are too high. For corporations, it's another story because the subsidies are so much better. It always makes me laugh driving around the Trump-supporting rural areas near where I live - all the farms have big solar arrays...
A majority of my energy comes from wind farms, so economically and environmentally they don't make sense as a residentia
Uh, that's never been the mantra (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's the Silicon Valley mantra of 'break things and let the regulators figure it out.'"
No, the Silicon Valley mantra has demonstrably been "break things and ignore regulations while arguing that regulation is evil."
Huh? What year do they think we're in right now? (Score:2, Informative)
The entire market for these has been a massive fraud entirely propped up by govt subsidies, self-dealing and circular revenue chains. Rooftop solar has never been a viable product because it's only ever been sold by money laundering fraudsters like Elon Musk.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr... [justice.gov]
The biggest company in this market was outted as a massive fraud 7 years ago. Any technologist talking about solar collapsing in 2024, is a technologist who didn'
another factor (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't help that several states have enacted a "not-using-utility" tax, or even (Florida!!!) refusing to issue occupancy permits for a house that disconnects from the grid. Fossil-fuel companies encourage aka bribe politicians to make sure going independent is as difficult as possible.
Re: another factor (Score:2)
A house that doesnâ(TM)t have a stable energy supply shouldnâ(TM)t be considered fit for occupancy. If you connected a diesel generator you would also not be considered for a COO in most towns, this is however, not regulated at the state level as you falsely claim, every town or city has their own rules, if you donâ(TM)t agree move to an unincorporated area.
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From eleven thousand years ago to fifty years ago most people didn't live with electricity and now you want it to be mandatory to pay a power company to be alive where you wish?
Yes, because electricity is just that beneficial. People lived a long time without indoor plumbing too but because of the sanitation benefits of it I expect it to be mandatory for the occupants to pay their water and sewer bills. There's a few houses near me that have well water and a septic system to go with their indoor plumbing but that's because it's an old property and the city grew up around them. If everyone did that then we could have a sanitation problem from septic tanks being too close to well
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It doesn't help that several states have enacted a "not-using-utility" tax, or even (Florida!!!) refusing to issue occupancy permits for a house that disconnects from the grid.
I don't blame them. I have a couple situations that come to mind as to why
Consider someone that is all enamored with living off the grid. One possible way is to go "new school" and have solar panels on the roof, a battery pack, inverters, and so on to where those visiting inside would not suspect the house is off the grid. Another is "old school", the house is devoid of anything electrical. Perhaps the house is fitted with gas mantles for lighting, or maybe oil lamps, or maybe they use something that is
KISS (Score:4, Interesting)
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Since a year the savings on power have paid back the investment.
I know the US is a -buy now, pay later- society but in the end that'll generally cost you more.
Don't forget state laws (Score:2, Interesting)
While this article focuses on the financing side of solar panel installation, don't forget there are states who are actively working to kill off solar so politicians can protect their bribes (er, political donations) from utility and fossil fuel companies by enacting government regulations. Oddly, the states putting up roadblocks to solar panel usage happen to be Republican-dominated, the same people who incessantly whine about government regulations.
Even better, these same states, almost to a one, offer n
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Even better, these same states, almost to a one, offer no subsidies for residential solar panel installation because, you know, subsidies bad
You are correct, subsides are bad. They allow solar firms to artificially raise their costs commensurate with what customers can afford with subsidies in place. It's a taxpayer funded cash grab.
while at the same time handing over millions of taxpayer dollars to well-established coal, oil, and gas comanies who also just happen to rake in billions in profits each year.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
don't forget there are states who are actively working to kill off solar so politicians can protect their bribes (er, political donations) from utility and fossil fuel companies by enacting government regulations.
Wasn't it California that went ahead with NEM 3.0 just a year ago?
Well that explains it..... (Score:5, Interesting)
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That’s pretty much all you need to know.
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Next time tell them to stop calling and when they don't use the criminal harassment settlement to fund your system with an ethical company.
Dude that's just how sales works (Score:2)
Buying things is a transaction not a relationship. Figuring that out is one step towards inoculating yourself against a wide variety of sales techniques that can fool you into doing dumb things...
Bad businesses (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the residential rooftop solar businesses operated inefficiently with huge markups. It doesn't take much to upset that model. You can DIY a project for ~$1.5/W, $2/W if you have an electrician do the hookups. The solar installers charge $4/W. While 50% of the cost being labor is not unheard of, for an 8kW system it backs out to about $350/hour labor. For comparison, a roofer gets paid about $20/hour.
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Damn, roofers are underpaid for that work.
Hot and risky!
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Actually, the modern "off-grid" all-in-one inverters simplify that a lot; you can use a utility feed to charge or on internal bypass, and batteries have become relatively easy, but they are incapable of export. They are even stackable so you have great options on system sizing.
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The names are overloaded. Off-grid inverters simply cannot parallel to the grid. An off-grid system in contrast better matches your expectation. Take a look at this EG4 unit [signaturesolar.com] as an example. The input circuit can be a utility or generator, but it serves only as a charging or bypass source.
Problems with rooftop solar (Score:2)
The utilities don't want you to do it.
You can only use the side of the roof facing south.
Who is going to climb up there in the winter and clean off the snow.
Yes, thanks to California of all places (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if the industry were not to fail, California has enacted new rules to ensure their demise.
https://calmatters.org/environ... [calmatters.org]
Basically they made several, terrible changes (someone! has to pay for all those wildfire settlement costs)
1. They added a large fee (based on income) just to be connected to the grid. And in most cities it is practically illegal to be off-grid (and also very expensive anyway)
2. They changed the payout formula. Normally you'd generate solar when the demand is peak (Sun it at the top during noon time), and use electricity when demand is low (nighttime), using the grid as a "battery". This worked at "retail" rates, so basically you'd be selling power to neighbors in leu of power plants, and buy back at the same rate. This is no longer true for new installations (and older "grandfathered" ones lose status if you upgrade your system)
3. They entirely broke the formula for "multi-family" homes. Even during daytime, consuming the solar you generate has a cost for you (they take it as wholesale, but sell at retail)
Anyway, there are probably other things that I missed. The idea was "those who can afford solar are wealthy" and those are targeted as cash cows to pay for those billions PG&E came up short.
And the results are as expected:
https://www.latimes.com/opinio... [latimes.com]
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It's my understanding that there are two types of solar for the house -- (1) the "always connected" type where your solar just supplements the grid, and your power still shuts off if there's a power outage, by design, ostensibly so that the lines are not live when the linemen work on them, which you buy into in theory so that your electrical bill goes down, and (2) the systems that not only power the grid but are true backups, automatically switching to local batteries if the grid goes down. (Either a rack
Not as simple as you think (Score:2)
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The new scheme may not be perfect but it sure beats what was before it.
The utility companies must build, replace, and maintain generating and storage capacity as well as distribution infrastructure to meet peak demands - even when the weather is really crappy for several days and solar and/or wind are not meeting demand. That capacity must be built, maintained, and tested regularly even if some of it's used only occasionally and basically sits idle most of the time. If your solar home connects to the grid,
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I don't know, it is all over the social media:
https://www.reddit.com/r/solar... [reddit.com]
The news:
https://www.cnet.com/home/ener... [cnet.com]
And the state legislature website:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca... [ca.gov]
Really, who would believe this?
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It is literally in the text of the law:
In Germany... (Score:5, Informative)
"where installation is done locally and there are fewer intermediaries, the typical residential system costs about 50% less than it costs in the U.S."
I didn't realize there was so much lard in these systems. Half the price is a huge difference, and would presumably cut the number of years until the system has paid for itself in half also. That makes solar a much more attractive proposition, and this could cause the industry to grow after the shysters get washed out.
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Some of the difference is in permitting and other red tape, that Germany has simplified.
Small & local (Score:2)
Whew (Score:5, Informative)
I have solar for an outbuilding to which I can't run power, and I have solar for the trailer for dry camping, and in each case I bought (not leased or rented or financed) the components and set it up myself.
Twice I looked into solar for the house, had salescreatures out both times, did a lot of reading, (starting with The Complete Idiot's Guide to Solar for your Home and branching off from there), looked at the financing side, read the reviews, and decided that the great majority was a scam. You see the ads all the time for "free solar" and "if you're paying more than $15 a month for electricity you're an idiot" and the like. But the great majority of these companies are in the same vein as the ones that want to sell you "one simple trick" to cure diabetes. The great majority are scams.
Sidebar: That goes for the great majority of "solar generators" offered for sale. THEY'RE JUST BATTERIES. Fine if a bit pricey for charging up your iphone, but forget powering your house. A friend bought one with a patriotic name as he regularly experienced outages. I sat down with him ahead of time and ran the numbers -- adding up power requirements and availability, he'd get only a few minutes on a full charge, then days of recharging on the wimpy solar panels provided, and horribly overpriced for what he was getting. But he bought it anyway. These things are designed to sell to hopeful people who don't understand electricity.
Anyway, for me it took a lot of time and was a bit frustrating, and I had to endure high pressure sales, but I'm glad I did the groundwork. It appears that I dodged a bullet.
THAT SAID, there are definite uses for solar. My trailer will run indefinitely on 350W provided by solar panels, using AGMs to store power for nighttime use, (don't get me started on lithiums -- people usually don't understand what lithium batteries actually buy you) but solutions like that require planning and knowledge. Everything in the trailer that doesn't run on propane, including the fridge, runs on 12 volts, (except air conditioning, which requires shore power) and everything is designed to use the minimum power possible.
And admittedly, I have a notion of isolating the house fridge and freezer on their own circuit, buy some deep cycle batteries, sine wave converter, soft start, and sufficient panels so that I could keep my food from spoiling if the power went off for a long period of time. And now, with companies going out of business, may be the time to look for deals on remaindered solar panels.
Addendum: Modern, self-contained wireless security cameras will also recharge off solar panels. The ones I put up have a separate panel rather than attached to the camera itself, allowing me to put the camera where it needs to be and run a line to the panel on the roof. It simplified the setup tremendously not to have to run any wires from the house to the cameras.
I guess the overall point being, solar has its uses, but if you're not knowledgeable, there's a strong chance that you will be scammed.
This is why I never bothered (Score:3)
Over the last 15 years all I read in the news is how solar panels are getting cheaper, and cheaper, and cheaper. Yet, the cost of installing solar kept rising faster and faster. This is a big red flag. If it sounds fishy then it is.
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This may be true if you have the ability to correctly install solar yourself. I've been interested in solar for years but the price keeps going up much faster than inflation would account for. Every time I read panels are dropping in price a quick check shows installation has increased at a faster pace. The solar industry is eating its own tail right now. Best to let the crooks get their fill and die off before even considering the move.
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Panel prices are actually pretty high right now. We got ours for $0.44/watt. I look now and most quality panels are around $1/watt. I don't know where this idea prices are always falling comes from, but it's false. They go up and down depending on what China is up to. They were dumping when we bought our Singaporean panels, and it brought all the prices down.
The chickens have come home to roost with Sunrun (Score:3)
It's no surprise that Sunrun is quickly making its way into bankruptcy. I have two sets of their solar panels on top of my house, installed by Vivint, a company Sunrun later acquired. The newer of the two sets of panels created two leaks in the roof that they don't seem to want to fix and have been trying to blame me for. Pigeons roost under the panels because they were installed too high off the roof. My neighbors don't have this problems because their panels were installed with less space underneath. There is a solution for this problem: guards. However, Vivint didn't install them. They did install guards on the front of the panels that are more cosmetic in nature to hide the wiring underneath them but those guards prevent the pigeon shit and nesting material from washing off the roof into the gutters and onto the ground when it rains. There is a legal term for what Vivint (and by extension Sunrun) did. It's called "negligence."
Sunrun's employees are also incompetent idiots who either don't know what they're doing or don't talk to each other. The newer set of panels are currently down because of an inverter problem. When I reported it to the company, they told me that they would do nothing until "the leak investigation was completed." Literally a half hour later someone called me from the company to arrange for a time for someone to come out and look at the problem. The problem has since been diagnosed but no one has called me to schedule a time for a tech to do the work. At this point, I am simply done with Sunrun as a company. I don't want to do business with them any longer.
The problem with rooftop solar is that roof tiles need to be removed and holes drilled into the tar paper and the boards underneath in order to install the feet that the panels are mounted upon. If those holes are not sealed up properly, water can get in and that's what's happening here. So, if you are thinking about getting roof top solar, DON'T! It's just not worth the aggravation given the demonstrated incompetence of Sunrun's employees.
No. (Score:2)
Legitimate installers... (Score:2)
...who charge a fair price for quality work will be fine
The shady ones who falsely advertise "free solar" and other crooked schemes deserve to die
What's this got to do with Solar (Score:2)
What's any of this financial shenanigans got to do with solar ?
My own math... (Score:2)
So this is why my own math has repeatedly not let me build a business case for solar. I mean, I want to, but versus leaving money in, say, VTI, my power company doesn't seem so expensive anymore.
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Thy to get a positive ROI on rooftop solar in the NorthEast with an electricity cost of 4 cents a kWh, a property surrounded by trees (half on neighbors properties) and a roof with 10 years of life left on it. Good thing is that even these “salesman” know that that would be a tough sell, and hence do not bother us — although it didn’t stop a public advocacy group (NYPIRG) from making their way to my door one evening years ago to sell me on the value of green energy — sheesh
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Unfortunately, many older neighborhoods in the NorthEast, have significant existing foliage, including trees and bushes (which covers fences in my case). Now one could make the argument that the judicious removal of trees which might blanket rooftop solar should be undertaken, but then the laws of untended consequences are triggered, as we now have fewer plant sequestering carbon dioxide from the air...
Discourages home buyers (Score:2)
Many home buyers won't buy a home that has solar panels on it. First, there is the mess of the lease that they have to assume. Then, when the roof itself has to be replaced (about every 15 years), the solar panels make this process more expensive, eroding the promised savings of energy costs.
In many places, you can sign up for an electricity plan from your utility, that is some guaranteed percent solar. This seems much more straightforward and practical, though it won't actually save you money.
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If solar power were so money-losing, why would solar farms be so prevalent in Texas, one of those deregulated states? Today, solar is generating a full 25% of the state's total electricity during daylight hours. https://www.ercot.com/ [ercot.com] At night, that 25% is being generated by wind farms. Texas is the nation's leader in both wind and solar power, so I don't see how it could be a money-losing bet.
Sunrun: Just making up subscriber numbers? (Score:2)
I sure hope it collapses (Score:2)
For anyone serious about addressing climate change rooftop solar is a massive waste of limited resources that are not being directed into renewable energy projects with much higher ROIs. Even if you are a fan of solar utility scale is more than 2x cheaper for the same capacity vs rooftop. Wind is a far better option still.
Most US rooftop solar is a decoration (Score:2)
Indeed (Score:2)
Like in the subprime lending crisis, some companies issued loans to people who could not — or would not — pay them.
And supposedly in service of a popular political/social goal. Yep, very similar indeed.
Yep. (Score:3)
"Even some people who voluntarily signed up for financing products say they were misled about the actual cost of the solar panels. That's because loans from companies like GoodLeap and Mosaic often include an unexplained and significant "dealer fee." For example, a customer buying a $30,000 solar panel system with a low interest rate may not know that price includes a $10,000 loan-dealer fee."
They are still doing this. I got a quote for rooftop solar in November 2023. The finance price was $25,000 more than the cash price. I asked why and the saleslady was loathe to explain it up front. I dug through the quote / fine print and saw that they are essentially trying to capture the customer's projected Federal tax credit. So if I had used their in house financing (as most people do) a $45,000 install suddenly became a $70,000 install. Because fuck you, that's why.
Of course the financing had an irresistible 1% interest rate attached to it. And if you never even asked about the cash price (as most people don't) then you're not shown it and you have no idea they're building in a premium.
I signed up to do the cash plan, but it didn't matter anyway as the site survey didn't come back to my satisfaction. They tried to claim I owed them for the survey, but as soon as I started making noise about the finance add on they decided $2,000 wasn't that important to them. /IAAL //Watch yourself kids. Satan Claus, he's out there. And he's just getting stronger.
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Solar panels are energy negative thus carbon negative. As more energy is used to manufacture them than they produce in their lifetime.
Sorry, not true.
https://www.solarquotes.com.au... [solarquotes.com.au]
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04... [nrel.gov]
https://energyeducation.ca/enc... [energyeducation.ca]
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I'm not fan of solar power but I won't go so far as to claim it is a net energy sink. I know Wikipedia isn't a great source but assuming the cited sources check out it may be a bit outdated but it's at least relatively accurate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
First problem with the claim on solar being a net energy sink is that there is more than one kind of solar. There's PV, thermal, and maybe more I forget. In PV there's silicon, titanium oxide, and other kinds of chemistry. In silicon PV there's di
Can get complicated (Score:2)
That can get complicated. Stll, your contract with the bankrupt company is considered an "asset", IE it's something that generates revenue.
So the normal thing is that when the company goes chapter 7, the assets would be auctioned off, while the debts are repaid in the court-ordered fashion until the money runs out.
However, in such transitions sometimes the "paperwork" gets lost. During the run up to the mortgage crisis, one guy's mortgage was sold so often that everybody lost track of who owned the mortga
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It can't become "due" to the holders. Due to abuses in the past, holders of debt cannot typically demand early repayment, especially if the debtor is maintaining payments as per contract. All they can do is sell it to somebody else or hire somebody to maintain the contract as written.
It'd probably be cheaper to just write off the debt, essentially giving the panels to the owner of the property they're installed on, than to face the lawsuits calling the debt in early would cause.
Since the investors don't w
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Uh... They may have the occasional maintenance need, but most residential panels are not hazardous waste.
And "property owners don't want them"? They had to sign the contract to get them, so they manifestly DID want them.
That said, I will admit that there are a percentage of shitshows out there. I'd assume that you'd have a higher percentage of them with a company that is going chapter 7 bankrupt.
Still, going from whatever you were paying before to paying nothing will probably make keeping the system wort