...Actually, I THINK we may be able to give 'em a run for the money

It's a best practice... how can it be wrong?

and my favorite dirty phrase "best practices"... Meaning "tell me what to do, I have no clue what the theory of operation is"

It's sad and in my opinion, from over 30 years experience, the product of testing and certification programs.... And manager/HR people who look for exactly those properties.

Who will come to sneer about how others have made choice's that make them poor?

I'm just askin'

but there IS a Starbucks

Yeah, like that... And while it seems a whole different issue, it's really not. It's ultimately all about the power of money and do we really want to feed and help grow corporations?

Not rent. Mortgage. The additional lien/contract can make the home more difficult to sell.

*might* is an interesting word. I *might* win the lottery... It's unlikely, but it *might* happen.

In the mean time, we have an unregulated corporation with their hand in the consumers pocket for the lifetime of the rooftop lease (20 years).

The equipment, if purchased outright with all the incentives available, is paid off in 7 years or less... At which time, the energy would be truly free to the consumer and the installation becomes a powerful asset when it comes time to sell the property vs a contractual liability to be navigated and re-negotiated. Generally speaking, property improvement loans are paid off at the time a property sells and the new owner is now running without an electric utility bill. How's THAT for a selling point even at a 5 to 6 year occupancy estimate?.

Someone mentioned greed. The first scenario looks like corporate greed to me (and swapping one corporate "master" for another). The second looks like independence to me. Both are debatable as to how green (what IS the carbon/environmental footprint of panel/battery manufacture anyway?)

There is the letter of the law and there is what is right.

There are a lot of things people CAN do... They just shouldn't

NOT zero outlay. you still pay just about what you'd have payed the utility anyway... And they get to build an indistrial plat in and about your property

The new owner IS encumbered and typically these are 20 year leases on your roof

Uhhh... it's unfair in that solarcity uses the tax benefit/subsidies due the homeowner AND has the homeowner's roof locked up under a 20 year lease? I've calculated that at retail levels, equipment costs and installation is paid off in 10 years. That's before the tax benefits/subsidies are applied.

Now, let's add a peculiar California spin on this (my state). The utilities have been required by law to add storage capacity to the grid for something known as regulation... Fill in. This means regulating the grid up and down. When they regulate the grid up... They feed energy to the grid. Regulating down means absorbing from the grid. These activities are extraordinarily lucrative and the property owner get's none of that but it uses the "plant" they have effectively paid for.

This is also why the utilities are crying foul over the lack of grid maintenance fees by the entities with this type of operation (there are only a few, but they're all big, pretending to be small). They get to act like an energy provider with few, if any of the responsibilities. And home owners shoulder most of the burden. I consider it a scam. The operation is new, mildly more complicated than just plugging in a blender so there is confusion. And "they" are taking advantage of the confusion, back by lawyers.

Having investigated this scenario, here's how it works:

Solarcity installs a system (panels, storage, chargers/inverters) on your premises at zero cost to you. They get the tax subsidy offered for the installation. You roof is now occupied by solarcity. They sell you electricity AND what you don't use, they sell to your local utility. You have now switched energy providers and are STILL paying power bills.

I fully recognize they they take on what maintenance there is on this plant... But there isn't much and they are completely unregulated. They charge the home owner whatever they please, just so it's below the regulated utility.

It doesn't sit well with me and I won't do business that way.

This same sort of thinking is what brought about the interstate commerce commission rules for railroads.

They though that if you made more the carrier should too.

The government slapped the carriers once before (railroads). It's time to slap the telecom carriers too

And I think about the semi-snarky comment "If we build buildings like we build software, the first woodpecker would destroy civilization", I find myself wondering how anything get's accomplished for real. It seems the really BIG stuff, is a huge one-off and not replicable

Look into their recent Richmond CA HUD reporting. They sort of chose to ignore huge chunks of stuff in favor of sensationalism