A friend of mine recently told me she was going to have a solar company come out and give her an estimate on installing solar panels on her roof. I never followed up to see what happened, but if she’s still considering it she might want to read the fine print. The Daily Signal reported that many of these companies, which receive big taxpayer subsidies, are gouging consumers with hidden costs. Oh, and it’s not just the consumers with solar panels, but their neighbors who get stuck sharing the cost.
Thanks to the slew of solar industry subsidies, homeowners can effectively contract with solar leasing firms that will install those panels for free. But they often get gouged later, as do taxpayers in one of the great corporate welfare scams of modern times.
Shady Solar Leasing Firms?
Congress is investigating if the industry is ensnaring homeowners in green energy “teaser” loans.
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., a member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, plus 11 House colleagues fired off a letter last month to the Federal Trade Commission asking if the booming solar leasing market — a “new industry with a limited track record and little regulatory oversight — poses a “considerable risk” to homeowners.
Some leasing companies “sold large numbers of subprime mortgages to unsuspecting homeowners in the runup to the subprime mortgage crisis,” the investigators have found.
California and Louisiana homeowners have filed class-action lawsuits vs. solar leasing companies alleging fraudulent marketing campaigns that don’t warn customers of true costs and risks.
Read the whole thing, there is much more, including how utility companies are forced to buy solar power at inflated rates, which must then be passed on to all of their customers. The solar companies also market heavily in areas like mine, where it’s not always that sunny. Hey, why not when other people foot the bill? What a racket!




I agree that ‘leasing’ solar is a very bad idea. I did look into purchase v lease and found leasing to be, as you said, a HUGE racket. The installer would not tell me what a buyout cost would be - citing market demand in 20 years. Sheesh!
However, I did purchase solar power. I’m fortunate to be living in San Diego where it’s almost never not sunny, so it made perfect sense for me. We’re getting killed by water and power costs in SoCal (probably similar stories everywhere), and no one seems to be real sure that our utility payments are actually going to fund our utility systems. Lots ‘o waste in those companies, for sure.
The value of the solar system was $40K, but outright purchase of the system was $30K (full disclosure: $10K CA state subsidy) and gives me a little more power than I have been using annually ‘on the grid’, so my goal was no power usage on my bill (we still pay grid usage fees and also our natural gas on this bill). At today’s electric rates my bill would average around $1K/mo. When I put the panels up my rates were averaging $540/mo.
I’m not trying to sell anybody on anything here, but I would caution against disparaging solar power because of some seriously messed-up way in which it can be financed.
Profiteers gonna profiteer no matter what, no matter where you go. And it’s good to read these kinds of articles to remind ourselves of that fact. Certainly all of us here know not to sign any kind of contract without reading the fine print. Certainly we all know “FREEEEEE!!!” is a big red flag most of the time.
Back to solar… I’m a drill-baby-drill first kinda guy. I also like the idea of the market being the driver of anything that’s a viable alternative. Solar works for me and my house. Mostly I’m just happy I’m not at the mercy of the power company’s ever-increasing pricing like I was.
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