It was about 2 months for us, too, from purchase agreement to going live. Our utility is Edison and they were the pokiest part of the process. There was a bit of a lag for the net metering agreement application, and then, after the city signed off on the permit inspection, another lag before the PTO (permission to operate) was issued.

We got many bids. Solar City really pushed the lease arrangement. They proposed a smaller system for a higher price– I think the promises of an inverter exchange and long warranty is priced in. There’s also the question of whether a leased system makes it harder to sell a house down the road. In our case, it made more sense to own a system and collect the tax credit.