Post by Odysseus on Sept 27, 2023 16:12:43 GMT
There's a lot of them out there...
This year, during the heat of summer, when temperatures in New York surpassed 90°F, the 22 solar panels on the roof of my house were doing absolutely nothing.
This is not something I learned until September, four months after my husband and I bought this house with a purportedly functional leased solar system in upstate New York, months after logging into a website that inaccurately told us that the panels were working, months after we forked over $6,000 to prepay the remainder of the 20-year lease to the company supposed to be maintaining the solar panels, Spruce Power, which happens to be the largest privately held owner and operator of residential solar in America.
A third-party technician dispatched to our house by Spruce in September blamed squirrels that chewed on some important wires. Spruce blamed the previous owners, who they said fell behind on lease payments; in September, Spruce told us it had disconnected the system previously but that did not explain why they’d taken our money to prepay the lease on the panels in June. The panels are still not working to full capacity. (Made aware that this article was in the works, Spruce said in September that it will repay us for the months the panels were not working.)
We are not alone. Obscured by the recent rush to sign up households for rooftop solar and speed up the electrification of America are those who already have solar panels on their roof that do not work. Many were early adopters who did the “right” thing for the planet, installing solar before the expanded financial incentives that came out of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Because solar was more expensive in the 2010s, many entered into leases with solar companies to defray upfront costs, and many were left in the lurch when those companies went out of business. Often, their solar leases were packaged and sold, alongside thousands of others, to private equity companies and other investors who were not incentivized to ensure, years into the leases, that service was good or that panels even worked. ...
This is not something I learned until September, four months after my husband and I bought this house with a purportedly functional leased solar system in upstate New York, months after logging into a website that inaccurately told us that the panels were working, months after we forked over $6,000 to prepay the remainder of the 20-year lease to the company supposed to be maintaining the solar panels, Spruce Power, which happens to be the largest privately held owner and operator of residential solar in America.
A third-party technician dispatched to our house by Spruce in September blamed squirrels that chewed on some important wires. Spruce blamed the previous owners, who they said fell behind on lease payments; in September, Spruce told us it had disconnected the system previously but that did not explain why they’d taken our money to prepay the lease on the panels in June. The panels are still not working to full capacity. (Made aware that this article was in the works, Spruce said in September that it will repay us for the months the panels were not working.)
We are not alone. Obscured by the recent rush to sign up households for rooftop solar and speed up the electrification of America are those who already have solar panels on their roof that do not work. Many were early adopters who did the “right” thing for the planet, installing solar before the expanded financial incentives that came out of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Because solar was more expensive in the 2010s, many entered into leases with solar companies to defray upfront costs, and many were left in the lurch when those companies went out of business. Often, their solar leases were packaged and sold, alongside thousands of others, to private equity companies and other investors who were not incentivized to ensure, years into the leases, that service was good or that panels even worked. ...
