WHY I CANCELLED WITH SOLAR CITY (STA BREAKING NEWS and ARCHIVES)

by pragnos , Monday, September 22, 2014, 12:15

STA readers;

Beware, the lure of clean green energy good feelings can get you hooked into a one sided PPA or power purchase agreement with the "good folks" at Solar City whose ad is running in the banner at the top of my page as I type this. Last week the weather was nice and I was out prowling my yard to check on flowers and bird feeders when a young attractive couple started walking down our driveway and haled me by first name! The young man reminded me of a friend of mine who I rarely see so I was caught off guard as the young woman was quite attractive and quick to smile demurely. They introduced themselves as being sales reps for Evolve a local DC area subcontractor handling door to door sale of Solar City solar PV systems to residential owners. They claimed SC is only selling by door to door in this area anyway.

My wife came out briefly and excused herself to go back to pressing work in her office. I talked with the couple further and they made it sound like in a short time we could get a preliminary proposal. So they want to see a recent electric bill which they photograph with their smart phone and send to their office for site review from satellite view of our house. So after some further digital communication we are told that our current cost from BGE is 13 cts/kwh and they are offering 11 cts/kwh. So here is where the bite sets in, they want you to sign a "non binding contract" so that they can trigger liability coverage for an "engineer" to come out and do an on-site survey of the house and obstructions like the big pines we have shading the west of our lot. I reluctantly signed electronically this "CONtract" to get the site review and refined proposal. To do this I graciously invited the couple into my house whom I had just met and had no basis to trust or not. I later caught hell from my wife for doing this--lesson learned.

So bottom line is they are willingly invasive, they use starry-eyed idealistic green minded young people to get over on us. They didn't offer me enough time to read the contract to see that cancellation needed to be by midnight of the 3rd business day even though it was said to be non-binding to begin with?! Then I see that the 11cts rate goes up by 2.9% each year and it is assumed that the local utility rates will go up by 4.8% a year thus showing an increasing savings over the 20 year term of the PPA. There is no provision for the possibility that the utility rates don't go up that fast or even go down due to some breakthrough in technology, etc. One would be stuck buying there solar PV output at an escalating rate for 20 yrs!!!!!!

There is a further sinister strategy at work here. They offer these PPA's in states that have "net metering" enabled where you can feed excess power into the utility grid during sunshine and draw back from the grid during low sun and night time. They size the PV system if your roof is big enough to produce each year about what you consume so that you only pay the utility the minimum service charge. They get all of your electricity purchase cash at their rates. If large numbers of residences were to hook up to these size systems, it would have enormously disruptive consequences to the existing utility grid. Yes, it would take the place of much of the peak load forcing the shut down of the legacy gas, coal, nuclear even wind that might otherwise be running during the daily peak load. Then when the sun goes down, what is going to pick up the load and at what cost per kwh? Hint: Tesla batteries?! Solar City is run by a cousin of Paypal & Tesla's Elon Musk. Solar City is not about green clean solar energy, it is about greening the coffers of the Musks et al. It is all about clever financing manipulations--beware.

I have cancelled the site survey and the PPA preliminary contract by phone and the time limit is bogus. I found out the young couple got my first name from my neighbor across the street where they visited before me. I stupidly gave them a name of another neighbor and I will apologize to them for doing so.

No good can come from door to door sales. --pragnos