Anonymous wrote:PV cells degrade with age and lose efficiency. Plus they are hazmats and VERY difficult and expensive to properly and ethically dispose of.

Lease them. Let the vendor worry about the hassle and expense of dealing with them when they are worn out.

Their expected life is more than 20 years, which is probably longer than your expected time owning the house, since most Americans move every seven years, on average.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Buying is better if you can afford the upfront investment

I've read that if you buy them however, you are responsible for all the maintenance on them (at your dime of course). Which to me seems like it would lead to a lot of non-functioning panels because of the expense associated with the repairs. Is this true?

The warranty will cover virtually any maintenance that would cost you any money. We've owned our panels for about four years, and there's been almost no maintenance needed — we did have to pay $185 to have our inverter connected to the Internet because the 3G wireless module it came with was being phased out, but we actually could have skipped that if we didn't want to keep getting SREC proceeds; we only needed it so the system would report back on production.

The SRECs make it well, well worth owning, at least in D.C. — our system brings in between $3,000 and $4,000 a year in SREC sales, and our total installation cost after the 30 percent federal tax credit was about $16,000. Not a whole lot of other investments that will throw off 20 percent a year, indefinitely (and that's not even accounting for the reduction in our electric bills).

We don't anticipate any additional maintenance costs going forward, but even if there were, it'd have to be pretty substantial to offset the benefits from selling the SRECs. If you lease, though, the owner of the system, i.e., the company you lease from, gets those proceeds.

The payback period for purchase is usually 7 years or less and they are usually warrantied for 20 years so ask yourself whoch makes sense.

They won’t have the same performance in year 20 as year 2 but this isn’t an iPhone that you’ll swap out every 4 years.

Make sure they aren’t made in China.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Buying is better if you can afford the upfront investment

I've read that if you buy them however, you are responsible for all the maintenance on them (at your dime of course). Which to me seems like it would lead to a lot of non-functioning panels because of the expense associated with the repairs. Is this true?

You are unlikely to have maintenance costs, certainly within the payback period. Most installers offer generous warranties in part for that reason.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Buying is better if you can afford the upfront investment

Not when you factor in paying again to have them dealt with when they reach end-of-life.

Source/cite for these costs?

Typically with a lease you get the energy savings but the lessor gets the SRECs. In DC, the SRECs are pretty valuable.

Anonymous wrote:Buying is better if you can afford the upfront investment

Not when you factor in paying again to have them dealt with when they reach end-of-life.

Anonymous wrote:Buying is better if you can afford the upfront investment

I've read that if you buy them however, you are responsible for all the maintenance on them (at your dime of course). Which to me seems like it would lead to a lot of non-functioning panels because of the expense associated with the repairs. Is this true?

PV cells degrade with age and lose efficiency. Plus they are hazmats and VERY difficult and expensive to properly and ethically dispose of.

Lease them. Let the vendor worry about the hassle and expense of dealing with them when they are worn out.

If you have a coin, call heads or tails and flip it.

Well, you have 2 responses that seem to settle the matter.

Lease if it makes sense financially so that you can install the improved version that is inevitable.

Buying is better if you can afford the upfront investment

If you have solar panels did you decide to lease, or buy/own? Also, what brought you to lease or buy?

We're in the beginning stages of this. Just fact gathering. Thanks in advance!