PSA for Solar

[Yoder]

Maybe just something to warn your parents or grandparents about. My next-door neighbor just put her house up for sale. Her and her husband are both in their 80's. They can't take care of it by themselves anymore and need to sell. We went over and looked at the house since we're in the market for another house. The heat, dryer and stove are all propane, so their electric bill was always right around $100 or so a month. They got solar panels about 4 years ago. WHY??? Whoever sold this poor woman solar, should be executed. The fact that she's 80, they will never break even on this nonsense. She told me, she still owes $70k and it will need to be paid off when the house sells. She had no idea how it worked, and her electric bill was still $50/month. Another thing that was messed up is the asphalt shingle roof on the house is 25 yrs old. The put the panels right on top of it. What kind of disaster is it going to be to install a new roof? They should have never installed the panels on a roof that's pretty much shot. I know it was their fault for buying it, but you have no soul taking advantage of old people like this. I actually felt sick to my stomach when she said she had to pay back $70k. She just wanted to do something good for the environment and save money on her electric bill.

 

[ScreamingPotato]

Ouch, that's terrible. I've seen some high pressure sales tactics, they prey on the elderly like scammers.

 

[BBob]

$70K for a small system was robbery. Yeah whomever sold it to them was a scammer and needs a public lashing.

I’ll add that I hear fairly similar things often when people go to buy a house. They have to take over an overpriced solar lease to buy the house. Some aren’t bad but there seems to be a number of bad deals out there.

 

[CorbLand]

There better be a special place in hell for some people.

The newspaper that my grandma subscribed to for years kept sending her all of these "special offers" on long term subscriptions. She was like 85 and in one year, they sent her a ton and basically got her to prepay for like 15 years of the newspaper. When she passed, they wouldnt refund it but we could change the address that the paper went to. It wasnt a large amount but still, they knew what they were doing.

 

[Tod osier]

We bought a house with a solar system from a deceased person and although we are pretty experienced home buyers and did our due diligence before purchase we ended up with a mess on our hands. I strongly second the cautions expressed here.

 

[BeaverHunter]

Never buy anything from a door to door sales person. Doesn’t matter if it’s solar panels, random services or religion. Hard pass

 

[TxLite]

My wife is a realtor and is always talking about what a nightmare solar panels are when it comes time to sell. You either have to pay it off or get the buyer to agree to make the payments

 

[racerman56]

Sad, she really got ripped off. There are great options out there but scammers are everywhere.

 

[txjustin]

She’s gonna take a huge haircut on the sell.

That will likely be discounted off sell price for most buyers, unless they priced it accordingly.


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[Jstumbaugh]

That's the scam right now. Big push for electrification of our energy consumption. HVAC electrification is being pushed hard by the government. New heat pump systems have their place and the technological advancements have been great. They do not out way the cost purchase and operate high efficiency fossil fuel systems depending on geographical climate. The grid can't handle the demand let alone the cost increase in electric over the past couple years.

 

[Jimmy]

An overly pushy solar salesman at Costco took my wife's politeness for interest in buying solar. He made an appointment to come to our house. Insisting that if we just sat down and looked at the numbers we'd save so much money. We'd be crazy not to, he said. When she gets home, she tells me the story, and calls the company to cancel the appointment. They say okay, its canceled. Next day my wife gets a text from the guy saying he's on his way over. She texted back and said no, it's been canceled. He says ok.

Little bit later he pulls into our driveway. Jumps out and tries to start his sales pitch. I told him we canceled the appointment, he shouldn't have come. He said "oh really? thats too bad, I didnt know, I forgot my phone today". I told him he's a liar, because he just replied to my wifes text a little before. I told him I don't like liars. He still tried to point at the house and ask questions about why we weren't interested. I told him to get off my property and don't come back. He did.

 

[SWOHTR]

Reason # many why I don't like a lot of people.

 

[Andrew12gauge]

The ones we always get say they are “working with the power company” and they simply “replace your power bill with a solar payment” nevermind that my power bill is ~$55/mo for 8 months of the year and the solar payment is usually around $200. Huge savings for me they say. I have looked into DIY home solar kits and it seems you can get panels, inverter, and battery storage for around $5k and I’m thinking about doing that.


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[doc holiday13]

The ones we always get say they are “working with the power company” and they simply “replace your power bill with a solar payment” nevermind that my power bill is ~$55/mo for 8 months of the year and the solar payment is usually around $200. Huge savings for me they say. I have looked into DIY home solar kits and it seems you can get panels, inverter, and battery storage for around $5k and I’m thinking about doing that.


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Its a case by case basis. Here in VA, my solar financing has me at $100/month and my electric bill for the entire year was $140. I do pay more than $100/month though because I would like to pay off in 4 years

Prior to solar my monthly bill was averaging $130/month and it had been slowly creeping up due to changes in rates

 

[Yoder]

Getting solar to have an off-grid setup makes sense to me. Putting it on my house to send power out into the universe does not. If this is such a great idea, then why aren't there solar panels covering every large building's roof in the country? Amazon, Walmart and Target could be some of the largest producers of power. It's also subsidized by taxpayers which also shows me it can't stand on it's own merit.

 

[Red Letters]

Maybe just something to warn your parents or grandparents about. My next-door neighbor just put her house up for sale. Her and her husband are both in their 80's. They can't take care of it by themselves anymore and need to sell. We went over and looked at the house since we're in the market for another house. The heat, dryer and stove are all propane, so their electric bill was always right around $100 or so a month. They got solar panels about 4 years ago. WHY??? Whoever sold this poor woman solar, should be executed. The fact that she's 80, they will never break even on this nonsense. She told me, she still owes $70k and it will need to be paid off when the house sells. She had no idea how it worked, and her electric bill was still $50/month. Another thing that was messed up is the asphalt shingle roof on the house is 25 yrs old. The put the panels right on top of it. What kind of disaster is it going to be to install a new roof? They should have never installed the panels on a roof that's pretty much shot. I know it was their fault for buying it, but you have no soul taking advantage of old people like this. I actually felt sick to my stomach when she said she had to pay back $70k. She just wanted to do something good for the environment and save money on her electric bill.

I saw a similar thing here, someone called the local news station and their investigation department was able to get something done to reverse charges. Stuff like this is worth fighting for, lowlifes preying on elderly people need all the attention brought to them as possible.

 

[Wrench]

That's the scam right now. Big push for electrification of our energy consumption. HVAC electrification is being pushed hard by the government. New heat pump systems have their place and the technological advancements have been great. They do not out way the cost purchase and operate high efficiency fossil fuel systems depending on geographical climate. The grid can't handle the demand let alone the cost increase in electric over the past couple years.

They're trying to villify natural gas so they can push the next wave of cash cows.....small scale nuclear reactors.

Coming to a pristine lake near you.

 

[Cameron.25]

Wow im sorry to hear that.. I would never install solar on anything but a metal roof first off. My parents next door neighbor kinda did the same thing like 4 years ago and it made zero sense to us, and the guy was a retired electrical engineer! They paid 25k after the gov rebate thing, but they had it installed on a 15ish year old asphalt roof and didn't even do a battery system.. Now the wife has dementia and they're in an assisted living community and have rented their house out.

Im interested in solar for my home for my own reasons, but I'm only 31. I would install it myself with my cousins help, on my brand new home that I built myself, that has a mechanical seam metal roof. Makes more sense for someone like me even though my electric bill is low

 

[5MilesBack]

So, when your solar system is dumping more electricity into the grid every month that what you use, does the electric company pay you for that electricity?

 

[BadDogPSD]

My sister mentioned she was thinking about having solar installed. I did a cost-benefit analysis for her that showed it would take over 50 years to pay for itself. She changed her mind.
So far as I know, power companies no longer buy the excess electricity produced.