Solar Battery Maintainer

Solar Battery Maintainers are one way to save money and do your part, however small, to cut down on carbon emissions. But wouldn’t it be great if you could scale that idea, say to the level of a home solar system? Well 90 houses now under construction in Yorba Linda, Ca. will offer their buyers that very opportunity.

The construction project, dubbed “The Preserve,” is the cooperative effort of three companies: Toll Brothers Inc., the construction company; Petersen Dean Roofing and Solar Systems, the solar energy system contractor; and SunRun Inc., the solar financing company.

The element that makes this a money-saving proposition from the git-go is the concept of solar financing.

Before we get into what exactly solar financing is, consider for a moment the upfront costs of a home solar system. Of course there are many factors to consider and the costs vary quite a lot, but you are definitely looking at tens of thousands of dollars—at least two grand, maybe twice that, and possibly even three times that amount. That would of course be tacked onto the price of the house, so even though you’d be saving a lot on your electricity bill every month, there is still a stiff initial cost involved. Another consideration is maintenance costs. The weak link in home solar power systems is the inverter. They generally need replacing in 12 to 15 years, at a cost of a few thousand dollars. Besides that, solar systems require monitoring to ensure that they are performing optimally, and if they are not, the problem must be diagnosed and remedied.

Solar financing, at least in the way that it’s practiced by SunRun, resolves all of the above issues. The way it works is, instead of buying the solar power system, you pay SunRun for the energy it produces. Sunrun retains ownership of the solar system itself, which means they have the right to charge for the energy it produces—just like a regular electric utility company—and responsibility for maintaining the system.

In the case of The Preserve development, the homeowners will be charged a fixed rate of $42.00 a month over the life of a 20 year contract, which works out to a total of $10,080. The nicest thing is that the rate is explicitly fixed. That could be seen as a disadvantaged if you expected the price of electricity to suddenly plummet during the next 20 years, but that seems a remote possibility at best. Since the 1970s, U.S. electricity prices have consistently risen faster than inflation. According the EIA (Energy Information Administration) the average retail price of electricity has increased more than 85% over the past 25 years. Nobody is predicting that trend to suddenly reverse course, so being guaranteed a fixed rate for for the next twenty years is a fantastic deal.

Solar financing doesn’t completely insulate you from rising utility rates because you are still connected to the traditional power grid, from which you draw electricity as needed. On the other hand, when your solar system produces more energy than you need, the excess flows back into the grid and your electric meter will literally spin backwards. The utility company will credit you for any electricity that your system fed back into the grid and deduct that amount from your final electricity bill. SunRun explains it this way on their website:

“At the end of the year, the utility calculates your ‘electricity balance.’ If your home used more energy from the grid than your home solar power system produced, you’ll owe the utility some money. If your home produced more electricity than you used, you won’t owe the utility a thing. Most utilities won’t pay you for any extra solar electricity you generated but didn’t use.”

In the case of this particular development, the home buyers are expected to be able to save from $50.00 to $100.00 on their monthly electricity bills. That means a potential savings of $24,000 over the life of the contract, or PPA (Power Purchase Agreement). At the end of the twenty year PPA, the homeowner has the options of renewing the contract with SunRun, buying the solar system outright, or having it removed.

A final benefit of solar financing I’d like to point out is that it’s a good sales point. SunRun’s PPAs are completely transferable to the new buyer, so in the event that the homeowner decides to sell the house before the end of the twenty-year-term, the fact of it having a solar power system would tend to make it easier rather than more difficult to sell.

In conclusion, if you like the idea of saving money and reducing your carbon footprint at the same time, home solar financing seems like pretty much of a no-brainer.

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