RevoluSun Vice President, Brian Sadler, talks about how to pay for solar panels, incentives for switching to solar, and some key differences between leasing and owning your solar system.
Transcript
Hi, I’m Brian Sadler with RevoluSun Solar. There are three things that dictate how solar is going to work for us. There’s the orientation to southern exposure, the shading, or lack there of, on our roof surfaces and how much sunlight we’re getting, and then the roof space or how many panels can we fit compared to what our electric bill dictates, as well as what our future energy goals may be.
Then there’s three things that are going to compensate us for going solar. There’s the net metering program, which you get regardless of which path you choose in going solar, which is going to save money on our electric bills. There’s the tax credits, which pay for about a third of the cost of the system. And then there’s the SMART program, unique to us to here in Massachusetts, that is a 10--year income program with monthly payments based on the performance of our system.
There’s two ways to go about acquiring solar. There’s leasing and owning. Leasing allows us to go solar with no money down and pay for the system for the next 20 or 25 years, with payments that are going to be lower than our monthly electric bills. With leasing, you allow the leasing company to take the tax credits and the SMART revenue and pass that back through to you in the form of lower monthly payments and you start saving day one.
Then there is owning the system. You can either pay for the system yourself or work with one of our financing partners that has a unique way of treating the incentives to allow you to also start saving money day one and owning the system in 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 [year] terms, depending on what’s the best fit for you and your family’s financial situation. So either way you go about it, going solar makes sense. It’s just a matter of what is the best fit for you and your family.