i guess i dont follow on this. yes, govt subsidies will stop soon, however its not like you get that every year. you just get it when you purchase it. and yes the solar lease company is getting that money now. but if you never had the money to buy the system anyways you would have never goten the help anyways.
and i dont think the state will just stop making the power company buy back power at a reasonable price. thats the whole job of the PUC. what type of changes are they changing in your state?
i know here, they dont pay a "premium" on power we sell back, i think they pay something like 20c on the dollar. however, where we are, any power we make over that we used that day just spin the meter backwards. so at night it comes back, now if we have more then we use at the end of the year we pay, if we have less they the power company pays.
and as for the roof comment, all roofs need replacement some time. so no matter what, anything you put on the roof (solar heaters for pools, or solar) will have to be replaced. our company told us to just turn it off and let the roofers take the panels off and we will have to pay 200 or so to have the solar company come back out and put them back up and hook it up. so its not really an issue.
The way many states do it is the power company is forced to pay a homeowner a "on peak" rate (the highest rate) for all power that's sold back to the grid from solar, so it's not say not 20 cents on the dollar.
Usually the way it works is during the day, some people's panels produce more electricity than the house is using at that particular time, so the power company "buys" the electricity at their highest rate and then credits the homeowner with that "money" to balance out their use at night.
The problem is, the power companies don't really want to buy this electricty at such a high rate, it's much cheaper for them to produce it themselves at their plants and they easily have the excess capacity. So this "loss" has to come somewhere, and usually it means jacking up other people's rates.
At some point, the power companies are simply going to say "whatever extra electricty you make is not our concern" and then the economics of installing solar gets even worse. Most of the solar companies that "lease" these panels have models that depend on this subsidy. Once it's gone, they're basically bankrupt.
In my state, they've have started introducing new user fees for solar users and are chipping away at this model. I believe most subsidies will be gone in a few years because it's hard to make the case why solar should have some sort of permanent subsidy. The solar leasing companies flipped out and spend crazy money trying to keep the old models in place.
Also, I don't believe for a minute these systems are really going to average out with 20 years of useful life. That's going to be the exception, not the rule. Most of this stuff is made in China at cut rate prices. I can't get 20 years out of a simple roof, much less Chinese electronic equipment that's exposed to the elements 24/7. So when you have a model of a 20 year lease, I have to wonder what happens if the company goes out of business or if the equipment is no longer functional.
If I went around selling "investments" that "might" let you break even in 20 years, I'd probably be in prison. But in a state like HI where the electricity is 4-5 times what it is in most states, solar starts making sense and I would probably have solar panels on my house.
paranoid much? so every solar lease company out there that we looked at, all covered all of that. except for batteries. as no lease company will do a battery back up setup as its not worth it for them. (and really only good if you are going off grid) they pay for everything including any damage they do to your roof. however, if your roof is old why would they cover that? thats up to the home owner. 