Solar Panels on the Roof!!

Hoot Hoot!! Well complaining to the BBB was an amazing way to go. Complaining to the ROC would have required a lot of work, but still I was about to do it when I was saved by the solar company responding. Thankfully BBB was all on-line and was simple to do. I forwarded the email from BBB stating that I logged a complaint to Salt River Solar and Wind and they suddenly had answers for me and wanted to work something out - what I wanted all along!

So what changed - I accepted an offer to lease the system paying a one-time lease instead of a purchase. The purchase would have been for about 14k out of pocket while this lease is for about $6k. The lease is for 20 years and they will keep the system working for that time period replacing expensive inverters etc as needed. I signed over all of my tax credits, state and federal, and of course the utility rebate.

Even though initially the tax benefits and rebate had the appearance to actually make me $300 more than what my out of pocket costs were, having talked to my tax person clarified that I wouldn't be able to realize all of those tax benefits . . . so best case I would have been able to use up to $4k of the benefits making the true cost about $10k for my panels.

By switching to the one-time lease (don't have to make monthly payments, just pay the approx $6k up front for the 20 year) I won't have to worry about reclaiming $$ from my taxes for the next 5 years. After 20 years we negotiated to have the panels become our property. Speaking of negotiation, we were able to get 2 more panels out of the deal to maximize the size of the system so now instead of having 40% of our power supplied we will have 43.6% of our power from solar power - not a big change but over a year it's about $100. Over the next 20 years it adds up and will help on my ROI.

So while I must say I really worked over the original contract they submitted to me, it paid off, but not as much as having complained to BBB. Yesterday they added the electrical and framework to the roof mounts and put all of the panels under my porch. Early this morning we woke up to the sweet sound of panels being installed on our roof. Now we just need to wait for SRP and the city to bless the panels and we are good to go.

I'm so excited, the excitement I felt in August of '10 is back and if I'm lucky we'll have free solar power by Aug '11. Thanks BBB.

Andrew "Squeaky will gets the grease" Brown