SolarCity under investigation for price shenanigans

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Smidge204

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Joined
Nov 24, 2010
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Treasury Dept. Fingers SolarCity in Exploration of the Dark Underbelly of Solar Leasing

It appears that SolarCity may be reporting inflated costs for leased solar PV installations to the US government so they can pocket a larger slice of the tax incentives currently on offer.

The article also makes mention about how leasing companies may be keeping the price of solar artificially high in order to extract money. It gives the following example: Grid power is 15 cents/kWh, Solar PV 9 cents/kHw, and the cost of to the homeowner under a lease is 13 cents/kWh. While I can't really begrudge a company for trying to make money, this DOES appear to inflate the cost of solar power by nearly 50% in this example. Maybe a better course of action is to take out a loan and buy the system outright, and substitute lease payments with loan payments?
=Smidge=
 
Smidge204 said:
Treasury Dept. Fingers SolarCity in Exploration of the Dark Underbelly of Solar Leasing

It appears that SolarCity may be reporting inflated costs for leased solar PV installations to the US government so they can pocket a larger slice of the tax incentives currently on offer.

The article also makes mention about how leasing companies may be keeping the price of solar artificially high in order to extract money. It gives the following example: Grid power is 15 cents/kWh, Solar PV 9 cents/kHw, and the cost of to the homeowner under a lease is 13 cents/kWh. While I can't really begrudge a company for trying to make money, this DOES appear to inflate the cost of solar power by nearly 50% in this example. Maybe a better course of action is to take out a loan and buy the system outright, and substitute lease payments with loan payments?
=Smidge=

Nice to see some vindication for my theory that this was what they were doing and how thus how the people who would lease and then buy out their lease were able to save so much money.

I feel like the last part of the sentence will help keep the lease costs lower, or at least make that a more popular route for people that do price comparisons. If it doesn't then I think that means there will be room for more smaller installers to come in and charge significantly less and still make good money.
 
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