Articles tagged "leases and ppas"

Let’s just cut to the chase: for most homeowners, a solar lease or power purchase agreement (PPA) will be somewhere between average and terrible for the homeowner. Here’s the bullet points on why: Solar leases and PPAs usually have an escalator clause that raises the cost of your electricity by a fixed amount every year. You could end up paying more for electricity than if you didn’t go solar at all.

One of the most popular ways that homeowners use to get solar panels on their home is with a lease or power purchase agreement (PPA). By going this way, you can get solar installed on your home for little or no money down. But there are downsides to this approach, one of which is that it can be harder to sell your home with leased panels. This is because with either a PPA or lease the homeowner doesn’t own the solar equipment.

With about 255,000 total customers, Sunrun is the largest solar installer in the United States. This means that if you’ve been shopping around for a solar installer, there’s a very good chance that you’ve come across Sunrun. When you go to sunrun.com, you’ll be given a breakdown of their 4 different solar payment plans. You’ll notice that they steer homeowners toward their leasing plan called Brightsave. While it’s possible to go the traditional route and have run Sunrun install a system that you purchase outright, their marketing is definitely slanted toward the no-money-down approach of leasing.

If you’re a homeowner in one of the top states for home solar such as California, New Mexico, or Arizona, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve had a salesperson from Vivint Solar come knocking on your door. Operating in 21 states and with gross revenues in 2018 of $760 million, Vivint Solar is one of the largest solar installers in the nation. Like its larger competitor SunRun, Vivint Solar sells home solar systems under a type of contract known as a power purchase agreement (PPA).

If you’re thinking of buying a house that already has solar panels installed, there are some questions you’ll need to run through with the buyer before you sign the contract. But first, if you’ve never thought about solar panels until you came across them in your home search, it’d be a good idea to do a little background reading first. Home solar panels have become wildly popular, with more than 2 millions solar installations now across the United State.