[quote=no_such_reality]OC, the leases aren’t like regularly leases, that’s why system are over-sized. The lease is more like a discounted car rental than a long term car lease.
You pay a discounted rate for KWH used whether produced by the utility or the panel on your roof.
Any net excess production credit goes to the operator, not the homeowner. The economics of panels and inverters favor oversized systems. A 10% cost increase for the inverter and you can double the number of panels. The panels themselves aren’t that expensive, the labor is as much and the labor cost is frankly the same whether you install 15 panels or 30 panels. When we installed ours that’s what we did, nearly doubled the system capacity for right around 10%.
Except for the selling issue, leasing is pretty attractive.[/quote]
I guess there are different leasing schemes out there. The quote I received involved a fixed payment monthly for the lease of the system. As for the price of the system I was quoted, increase in capacity by 10% was accompanied by increase in price by 10% as well. I also went to the wholesale solar site just to see the cost of the system without installation, the capacity vs cost increase were identical. Doubling the capacity led to doubling of cost. But maybe that’s because I’ve been looking at smaller systems.
