Chart: How are homeowners paying for solar?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Not long ago, a homeowner or commercial property owner who wanted to install solar on their rooftop had to have a chunk of cash readily available to cover the rather hefty upfront costs. Solar companies, realizing they're missing a big piece of the market, are now offering third-party financing options such as leases or power purchase agreements. The financing and leasing options have proven popular.

Sungevity, SolarCity and SunRun all offer financing. Even Google has jumped into the third-part financing game. The search engine giant (and clean energy investor) created a $280 million earlier this year with SolarCity to help finance residential solar installations. Other recent entrants include Clean Power Finance and One Roof Energy.

And today, Vivint Solar announced it will offer financing for 2,400 solar projects currently in its pipeline via $75 million funded by US Bancorp.

Check out these two charts from GTM Research's Solar Market Insight, which Greentech Media highlighted today, that show the rise in third-part financing. Keep in mind the charts only focus on California.

The second chart shows the same trend with non-residential installs. Note that third-party financing grew from 7 megawatts in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 17.6 MW in the first quarter of this year.

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/intelligent-energy/chart-how-are-homeowners-paying-for-solar/9734?tag=search-river

[Obama 2012 1,714]

so in other words people are still spending out the #######, just with an interest rate attached now and still not saving REAL dollars for a very long time....

and just what we need, more people in debt!

Way to go! I think you outdid yourself on this one!

Edited October 27, 2011 by DJ Kyo

[SMR 368]

so in other words people are still spending out the #######, just with an interest rate attached now and still not saving REAL dollars for a very long time....

and just what we need, more people in debt!

Way to go! I think you outdid yourself on this one!

Perhaps. We would need to see some numbers on this. If you are leasing a solar panel, either you save money on your energy bill greater than the cost of leasing in the first month, or you will never save money (assuming the lease is at a constant rate, which I would expect to be the case).

[dalegg 143]

I can't do it. I really want to do it too. But every which way I have looked it ends up costing me more money than my existing electric bill.