In Solar 101 part #2 we roll up our sleeves and explore with real-life examples how solar energy could be a game-changer for you. Your hosts, Ralph and Ben break down the nitty-gritty of solar savings, discussing the dynamics of old electric bills, solar bills, and new electric bills. We'll share compelling examples of people whose lives were changed through solar energy and cautionary tales of others whose hasty decisions led to unanticipated burdens. We'll also tackle the often-misunderstood realm of solar financing options, detailing the pros and cons of various purchase methods, from cash to financing to leasing. We aim to provide you with data-backed insights so you can make an informed decision about whether solar energy is a feasible option for you. We look forward to enlightening your journey towards achieving energy independence and financial savings with solar power!
1:55 The Solar Savings Chart
7:29 Not all homes are the same
12:46 Real Life Example of when solar is a great idea
20:12 Real Life Example of when solar is a bad idea
27:06 200% offset, you still have a bill from the utility
34:36 Solar System Purchasing Options
38:33 Going Solar with Cash
40:28 Going Solar with Financing
43:56 Re-amortization with a solar loan
49:23 Understanding Solar Options and Decision-Making
50:23 Going Solar with a Lease
In Solar 101 part #2 we roll up our sleeves and explore with real-life examples how solar energy could be a game-changer for you. Your hosts, Ralph and Ben break down the nitty-gritty of solar savings, discussing the dynamics of old electric bills, solar bills, and new electric bills. We'll share compelling examples of people whose lives were changed through solar energy and cautionary tales of others whose hasty decisions led to unanticipated burdens. We'll also tackle the often-misunderstood realm of solar financing options, detailing the pros and cons of various purchase methods, from cash to financing to leasing. We aim to provide you with data-backed insights so you can make an informed decision about whether solar energy is a feasible option for you. We look forward to enlightening your journey towards achieving energy independence and financial savings with solar power!
1:55 The Solar Savings Chart
7:29 Not all homes are the same
12:46 Real Life Example of when solar is a great idea
20:12 Real Life Example of when solar is a bad idea
27:06 200% offset, you still have a bill from the utility
34:36 Solar System Purchasing Options
38:33 Going Solar with Cash
40:28 Going Solar with Financing
43:56 Re-amortization with a solar loan
49:23 Understanding Solar Options and Decision-Making
50:23 Going Solar with a Lease
Welcome to another episode of the Harman solar podcast. I'm your host, ralph Romano, vp of sales and marketing at Harman solar, and alongside me is my co-host, ben Wilkslager.
Speaker 1:We know him as Mr, everything, it's good to be back. We don't need to go into my job, tyler, because this is just part two.
Speaker 2:We're not going to do that, so this is part two. So we leave that alone.
Speaker 1:My job title has not changed in like 10 minutes.
Speaker 2:So this is episode eight, part two. This is a continuation of the solar 101 podcast that we recently did, and this is now. We're going to get into the savings and some other stuff and we're going to give some real life examples and show some of this thing so people can get an idea of number one, how the savings work. We're going to talk about how heavy a home isn't the same and then we're going to show some real life examples and then we'll get into the purchasing, the financing and all that kind of stuff as well. So the meat and potatoes of solar this is the meat and potatoes of the solar. We gave you all the equipment and how that works, and we gave you all that first, so we set you up and now we're going to get you.
Speaker 1:This might be the most important podcast right here, because everyone wants to know like what am I going to pay? Solar is a scam. I'm not saving money, all this stuff. We have proof of both scenarios, correct? People saving money and people not saving money who should never go solar. I know we talk about a lot on the podcast, but now we have shown you actual data. You know of real life people that have reached out to us of whether or not they want to go solar and we took a look at it, and so here's the data.
Speaker 1:Here's all of it for you.
Speaker 2:The proof is in the pudding. Yeah, all right, so let's get to our wonderful slides.
Speaker 1:What do we got?
Speaker 2:first. So we're going to talk first is we're going to show you. I love this. We actually I don't know if we've invented this, but we did this a long time ago and we created the savings kind of chart and we put this up at home shows and different things that we do and it's a real great visual of understanding how the savings and solar work. So let's look at it. So you've got like three different sections in a sense. So you have your old electric bill. You can see that in the gray and we start today. This is where your bill is at. You see how it's the highest point and if you did nothing, if you didn't go solar, you just lived your life and you paid your utility bill and you went through the 4% annual increases on average that we assume for this chart. You can see where your electric bill goes. They call it the cost of doing nothing. The cost of doing nothing, the cost of it.
Speaker 2:Right, or procrastinating for 20 years. This is what it would look like and it's typical right. That's what all our with all our bills. It could probably do this to gas everything else that we pay for 20 years ago to now. You would look at the see this same kind of grid.
Speaker 1:And what's funny is is this is not made up Like we didn't just decide to make a little graphic that has your bills going up. Right, it's public information. You can go on to your utility sites and it'll say by the way, we're increasing rates on this day. Right, exactly, and you can look at the historical increases of these rates. It's out there.
Speaker 2:Yep. So this is a great visual. For those of you that I'm very visual, I need to see things. So for me, this is what this was my aha when I looked at this the first time. I went yeah, this makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so you see your old lecture bill we just talked about, then your solar bill, and your solar bill is down there in that orangeish color. It's a set straight bill. It does never increase. That's what you pay for your solar yeah, we'll do escalators.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, we can, we can do escalators, but typically we never do, unless somebody really wants one.
Speaker 1:But you'll typically see we'll get into that later.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the least thing. But so you see, your solar bill is flat lined for 20 years, so not not going to change the power that you're producing on your roof. That's what you're going to pay for it Right, today, tomorrow, 20 years from now done, and then you have what's called the new electric bill. That's the turquoise part, and what that is is you're always going to pay your solar and then you're going to pay a piece to the utility and of course it's going to go up over time because utility rates increase, but you're not going to have that steep incline that they, that they have if they don't do anything, because you're you're buying most of your power, particularly, hopefully, first off from solar and it's a fixed payment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the bulk of your payment is going. The bulk of the power that you've purchased is from your solar system. Right, it's just the extra.
Speaker 2:So look at today and you can see if you, if you add the solar bill and the new electric bill, that's where you're at for what you're paying for power versus what you would have been paying or what you were paying to the utility, and then over time you can see where your bill is, the two combined versus what you would, what it would be if you did nothing. This is the whole premise of saving money with solar. Your bill, your new bill plus your solar bill together added together, going against your old electric bill, that should be less than what you were paying before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, always. And it's a funny. It's a funny thing that we mentioned because a lot of people will say like, oh, I can't afford solar. Yeah, you know, like I can't afford it. And to me, if it makes sense, if you are a candidate and we can show savings because, again, like we mentioned before, there's certain cases where it doesn't if it makes sense, then yes, you can, because you can. Actually, you know if you can pay your current electric bill, then yes, you can pay for solar because it's less. It's not like buying, you know cabinets for your home, because when you buy cabinets for your home, you pay that fixed, you know costs, whether it's you know cash or finance, and you're paying for that. Those cabinets aren't reducing another bill in your right Good point, whereas solar, you're buying solar.
Speaker 1:Yes, you're paying for solar, but that payment is now reducing another payment because I get it. You know people are, you know, budget their finances out and all that stuff, but they're including the cost of their electricity. You know like, oh, I'm used to paying $200 a month for my electricity, but okay, but when you get solar, you're no longer paying that $200 a month. You're supposed to be paying less.
Speaker 1:So it's taking care of that. So you know, when people say that I can't afford solar, I'm like, no, you can't afford not to go solar Right. Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for the most part.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:And so I mean, if you get anything from this, from this episode, it's this, it's this grid.
Speaker 2:This is how it works. Right, this is the idea behind solar. This is what's made it so successful, because this is exactly how it works. There are going to be scenarios and it just depends on your situation where maybe your solar bill and your new electric bill are equal to what you're paying today, sure, or maybe they're even a couple of dollars more, but over a 20 year period, 25 year period, you're going to see that they're going to separate and you're going to save money. Again, it just depends on your scenario.
Speaker 1:What.
Speaker 2:I'm showing you in this grid is typical.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause we know there's people that have different things that they've added onto their solar payment. You know they had to upgrade their roof or their service panel or they wanted to get, you know, batteries and EV chargers and all that stuff. So this graphic is more just the solar right Solar aspect of it. All the other stuff added onto it is hard to visualize, right?
Speaker 2:If you redo your roof and then maybe do a charger and a battery, so your starting point might be a little higher, right?
Speaker 2:But over the 20 year period, you're still getting the savings Right, right. So this is. This is a great thing. Just to take this screenshot, this do anything you need to do. Call me and I'll send it to you. Email me this. This is the basis of everything that we do. This is how. This is how solar savings works. Right Period? End of story. Hang it on your refrigerator. Hang it on your refrigerator.
Speaker 1:We should make magnets of this. That'd be funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but what?
Speaker 1:is this you don't worry about it.
Speaker 2:All right, so that that is how solar savings work. Now we're going to talk about we've mentioned this a lot of times over the podcast that we've done, episodes we've done. Not all homes are the same, I know.
Speaker 1:What do you mean? A lot of people think they are, though.
Speaker 2:They think they are and they're just not. I mean, so me and Ben have the same exact house. It doesn't mean we use things the same way, right, right? So here's an example I'm showing on these slides I have two 2000 square foot homes. They're both red.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. So yeah, that's a huge difference in solar.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:Absolutely More sunlight.
Speaker 2:So this home on the left has a husband and wife and they got a lot of kids. You know, they got a lot of time in their hands. They keep their energy, they keep their air conditioning at 72. Okay, they got a pool. Okay, because the kids like to swim. They got an electric car, okay, right, pretty good setup. That's the average American family. Maybe they have a little bit more kids than most average family, but whatever, you know, they like kids. They got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. They got a lot of kids, okay, all right. And then what you got is the neighbor. That's Ben there, I am.
Speaker 1:When he had hair. Right, it's a good looking man right there. Look at that guy.
Speaker 2:He keeps his thermostat at 97. Oh well, you know, I like it.
Speaker 1:He likes it. I got really warm in my house. He likes it.
Speaker 2:He likes it warm, right? So I mean, just in that example you have two of the exact same homes. Yep, they use power completely different, right Right, Ben's never home. He's working all the time. He's out at cigar bars at night. He doesn't care what his house temperature is, cause when he gets home he'll probably turn it down. It'll be like nine o'clock at night cause he's a late guy. Yeah, these guys are home all day. You know, the wife's home with the kids, maybe she home schools, whatever she's doing, but I mean she's keeping it at 72. She's. They're going to use a lot more power on the left side here than they were on the right.
Speaker 1:But if you notice the things that are the same, the house. So when we have people come up to us and say, mom, it's just solar for a 2000 square foot home, are you the person on the left or are you the person on the right, exactly, or you're somewhere in between. Exactly, we don't know, right, we have no idea. I don't care about your square footage, I care about what's going on in the home.
Speaker 2:Customized solar systems. Yep Period. That's how this is done. So this is a great visual example just to kind of make our point. Yeah Right, so I'm going to show you some saving examples on the and these are just actually. I believe these are both real examples.
Speaker 1:Real life? No, they are these are real life examples that I had pulled.
Speaker 2:So let's go here so that you had pulled interesting and then we'll get into your stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh, these are actual these are.
Speaker 2:These are my actuals and we have your actuals. Ralph did work, ralph did work, okay. So in this example one they had, they had an electric bill of $200 a month. That was their average bill. So they were spending $2,400 a year on electricity. They went solar. They went with zero down $90 per month for solar with their pan. Okay, pretty good deal. This is back when the rates were really low too. So this is a. This is an example from back then. So zero down, $90 a month, they're electric bill. Now they're new bill is $35. So we just talked about the grid, right, $90 for solar, $35 is their new bill. That is, that's the savings.
Speaker 2:How much 90 plus 35 equals $125. $100, he knows math $125 a month on average, for a new annual of $1,500 per year.
Speaker 1:That goes back to what I was saying about kitchen cabinets. When you buy a kitchen cabinets it doesn't reduce anything. Solar reduces in a bill that you already are paying.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and so this customer is now saving. So basically, they're spending $75 per month or $900 per year. That's what they're saving. I said that wrong. They're saving $75 a month on average. $900 per year is what they're saving.
Speaker 1:Pretty good, pretty good, right, I would like that next year $900 in the pocket, hey, a year.
Speaker 2:So one more example. So example number two Old electric bill. This is a bigger house. $400 per month was what they were paying on average. So they're paying $4,800 a year for solar I mean for power, with before solar. So they go ahead and go solar zero down $150 a month.
Speaker 1:Not bad Bigger system. It's gonna cost a little bit more.
Speaker 2:It'll cost a little more. Their new electric bill $35 a month. Okay, pretty good. So total cost of electricity for them now $185 per month and they're gonna spend $2,220 per year on average. That's good savings.
Speaker 2:And that's again with new bill, solar bill, yep added together, added together, so we're at 22, 20 per year, they're saving an average of $215 per month, or an annual of $2,580 savings. Now caveat, provided they use power the same way they've been using it before solar Cause they might decide to use more. They've got some room now, right, so maybe they're paying 25, they're saving 25, 80. Maybe they want to put the thermostat a little lower, so maybe they're gonna cut into that savings, use a little more power, but still they've got the room to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, just like the previous example you saw, ben's house was at 97 degrees apparently. If I've talked to my sales consultant, I said hey, I'm living at 97 cause I'm trying to save money, but I would like to live a little bit more comfortable. I want to put my thermostat down to a reasonable temperature, so I might need more panels, more power to do so. So I still want to save money, but I also want to live a little bit more comfortable, so design a system that can do that for me. Great, exactly.
Speaker 2:Though that is an option. So those are my two. Those are actual examples. I've used those examples in training and stuff just to show people how it kind of works. So those are my examples.
Speaker 1:Now we're gonna get into Ben's examples, real life numbers. These are his real life numbers Now he's got some really cool information.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna let you drive this car. Go ahead, because these are actual customers that you've dealt with and helped or did what you could.
Speaker 1:So what I like to do with my customers is I go into depth, I probably do more than what's needed with customers and a lot of them tell me like, wow, you just, you're very technical, you have a lot of information that you're just, you know, putting out there and I feel like I need to be transparent because you know you have to be. So what I do is I look at okay, what's your cost before solar? So usually I get into your utility count, I pull data, see how much you're using. What time of day are you use the most power? You know, are you 20% on peak or are you a 10% on peak type person? You know what? Do you set your thermostat out? What's your future gonna be like? All these I ask all those questions, you know, and it's a lot of information that I ask because I need that so I can customize your system.
Speaker 1:So in this example you see at the top, that's all before solar. So these are actual bills from someone paying before solar. So you know, in January, february, they're paying $222. And then, as you can see that bell curve that we've talked about many times, before summertime they were paying, you know, $700, $600. Wow, so they're paying $2,000 each month and then drops back down in the winter. Those were there before solar bills. Those are big bills. Yeah, man, they used a lot of power, they used a ton of power, you know, and again, this is their situation. So if you're looking at this and you're like, well, my bills aren't $700. Okay, well, that's you, this is their situation. Everyone's gonna be different. So, in their situation, that's how they use power and that's how they used, or that's how much they spent After getting solar. They're APS bills. Oh, I don't know if I should have said that. Is it APS? It's okay. Yeah, so their APS bills dropped down significantly, as you can see.
Speaker 2:That's insane.
Speaker 1:And this is what I tell people nowadays, when you get solar just because of how rates are and how the buybacks and the credits and all that stuff goes if you are offsetting a lot of your power via solar, you're probably going to get negative bills in the early spring. And that's what those credits that we always talk about. You want to build credits. Credits are like your savings account. You build up a lot of credits to carry you over through the summer because in the summertime you're gonna be using a lot more, as you saw from their previous bills. So you're building credits because your solar system's producing more than you're using Because, as you know, in the springtime it's bright and sunny, but we're not running our AC 24-7 like we are in the summer.
Speaker 1:So where does that extra power go? Goes to the grid. Grid buys it at a certain rate and you get credit for that. So this is an example of someone who's overproducing, but not by too much, but just overproducing enough so that they build up those credits. I mean, they have negative bills in the springtime, so that's kind of nice. They went from paying $200 and $400 in the spring to not having a bill. For what is that? One, two, three, four, four months out of the year not having a bill.
Speaker 2:You know what really is cool? You stand out there. Low bill before solar was $204. And that was their I guess that was our March bill. If you look at the March bill with solar, it's a negative 169. It's pretty good A credit of 169. And then if you look at the summer, like I looked at July $737 bill before solar, july with solar $87. Now obviously that plus would they have to pay for solar, which you can talk about in a second. That's dramatic, that's a huge drop. This person, I guarantee you they're loving the fact they were paying $5,000 a year for power. They're not anymore.
Speaker 1:This is a great example of what. I mentioned it a couple of times already kitchen cabinets. When you're buying kitchen cabinets, it doesn't reduce anything in your home. Solar's reducing these already high bills. So when you say I can't afford solar, that's when I show people this and I go well, if you can afford $200 a month, $200 a month, $500 a month, $700 a month, $600 a month, then I'm pretty sure you can afford. Negative 64, negative 123, negative 70.
Speaker 2:Can't afford to pay $5,000 to their utility, but I can afford that, but I can't afford to pay probably about $2,000 or less.
Speaker 1:I can afford to keep paying them more, but I can't afford to pay them less. That's backwards.
Speaker 2:Think about the golf clubs you can buy with the money you're saving.
Speaker 1:All right, calm down, now calm down.
Speaker 2:And so their loan is right there too, as a 300 month loan 1.49 APR, so again solar's not free.
Speaker 1:I know there's a lot of bad information out there. You have to pay for solar, so then you have to ask yourself okay, well, how much is the solar system then? How much are they paying for that? Are they paying $500 a month for that? No, there's an actual screenshot right there of their solar loan. So it was 300 month loan, 1.49% financing. This was a few years ago. Terms have changed, so if you want to quote an updated one, let us know. Their loan payment is $181.65. So even if you take their highest bill, which is what is that?
Speaker 1:1.59, so let's call it 1.60 and you add on their $181 a month loan, that's a lot lower than their $700 monthly summer payment before 40% less, yeah, so they're still saving money even with that loan, and the beauty of that is, once the loan is paid off, then they don't have that loan payment anymore.
Speaker 2:So savings is even great. You have months where with the money you're saving, $231,. You have a negative 231 in April. You put that. I mean that covers your loan payment.
Speaker 1:That gives you extra money. Right, that's what I tell a lot of my customers too is just because you have a 20 year loan or 25 year loan doesn't mean you have to spend the full 25 years paying that loan. If you notice like, wow, I didn't have an APS bill this month and I'm normally paying them about $200, maybe I'll take that $200 and just put it towards my loan. Pay it off faster. That would make a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just to prove to you we're not just making this up yeah, right, here's the next slide is the actual before bill. It's one of the before bills, right?
Speaker 1:Yep, so there's. If you see the total electricity charges before bottom left-hand corner, they're paying 600 bucks. This was for the month of June and May. You can see that in the top right-hand corner. So next slide after solar 142. For the same month period they used about the same amount of power, but now they only paid $142 for it. What you're saying is it kind of works it kind?
Speaker 2:of works and again that's 142,000.
Speaker 1:It's just their utility bill plus the 181 for the solar system is still significantly less than 600.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a great example and maybe we can you could even kind of see the credits that are on the bill and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can see they have a $143 credit because that's the extra power that they produced. It went to the grid and the utility company bought it back from them, so it reduced their bill because it was going to be 285, but then they had the credit from the previous month and rolled over and that's that's really cool.
Speaker 2:You know, what's really cool is the comparing the monthly uses. When you go to the very bottom on the right, your average daily cost I think it's 474.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, 474 this month, last month 45 cents, that one 45 cents 45 cents.
Speaker 2:Wow, it's pretty good. This is very good. This is a great example of why solar is such a great opportunity for everybody. Now, this is not what everybody's going to experience, but this is one example, and I know you're going to get into a bad idea here real soon, but this is if it works for you.
Speaker 1:This is typically what it looks like. Again, there's a lot of people out there who shouldn't go solar. This is one case that they're glad that they went solar because they are saving thousands of dollars a year because of they were spending a lot before and now they're spending a lot less now.
Speaker 2:Right. So, and one of the things we talk about is Harman solar will tell you no.
Speaker 1:And people hate that.
Speaker 2:And people hate that, and we're going to show you an example of somebody that we said no. And what we would have said, what makes the most? We would have said no to, but they went solar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sometimes, um, I think if you Google my name and solar reviews, I do have a bad review out there, because I told some person, no, they shouldn't get solar, because I did all the numbers. I looked at everything and I said, oh yeah, this actually doesn't make sense and she was adamant about doing it anyways. And she decided to do it afterwards. And me, the type of person that I am, I decided to follow up and said so, how's everything going Nice?
Speaker 1:And uh, yeah, it turned out it wasn't a good idea. I'm like see, I told you I'd rather make no money and sleep at night than, uh, you know, then take advantage of someone just to make a quick buck. That's not who I am.
Speaker 2:So let's look at this person's case.
Speaker 1:This is so, yeah, this is again before and after and I color coded and everything. So before they were paying. Um, you know APS about, you know a hundred, some dollars in the early spring got up to maybe about $400 in the summertime, which is when a lot of people start going. I should probably get solar. I have a $400 bill. Will it make sense for me? So that's why I do all this.
Speaker 1:You can't just look at the dollar amount, you can't just look at the total usage and go, oh yeah, you know you're, you're paying a lot and you're using a lot. What I do is I take a look at well, what rate are you paying? So what I do is so the column to the far right is the rate I take, how much they're using and how much they're paying, and I divide those two right, just like your payment at the pump. If gas is $4 a gallon and I get 10 gallons, that's $40. So same thing with you know your utility bill. If I paid $120 and I used 1,190 kilowatt hours, that means I paid 10 cents per kilowatt hour. So I take that into account when I'm I'm take a look at it to see is it going to make sense, because right now in APS, the average, like we mentioned before, is about 16 cents. This person's paying 11 cents. It's really good they're way below average.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just gonna. I was noticing that going this person, their current situation before solar it's not bad. Yeah, so they actually would tell them no way, yeah, you're doing good.
Speaker 1:And the reason why I found out because they're not really home during on peak times because of the work schedule, they don't pay really the expensive rates, so they're mostly paying off peak and because they're a home at only you know late at night and they're gone throughout the day, so it it didn't really make sense for them because they were paying a pretty low rate to begin with.
Speaker 2:Now the only way I would probably tell this person it could be a good idea is if I can give them solar and keep them pretty much where they're at. I know that the future savings would be there, so that would make sense. But you can tell right off the bat when you go to this next part of this, it's this. Then this wasn't that way. No, not, not at all. No, no.
Speaker 1:So take a look at, okay, once they got solar, yes, their bills went down. You're like, cool, I got negative bills, things like that. But look at my summer bills. They were pretty high. And then the account for my solar loan. You put them that the it was $184 for their solar loan. Add those two numbers together and you can see the totals that I've highlighted. I don't know if you can point on the screen or whatever, but before they were going solar, they used 2,000, 400 or 24,623. After going solar, they used 22,522. So it went down. So they lowered their usage, which is really odd, which is, yeah, very strange. They used less power. So you would think, if I use less power, I should be paying less. But they actually paid $3,598 versus 2,700. Wow, so they used less, but because of the solar loan and because of you know it wasn't a good fit for them they ended up paying more.
Speaker 2:They went from an 11 cent average to 16 cents. A 16 cents average man.
Speaker 1:So that's a case where you should not have gone solar. That's a bad idea. Yeah, and we do get these people that call in. They say, hey, you know the solar company I went with. They're out of business. Can you guys do an analysis, cause I don't think I'm saving money? Those calls usually get go to me and I take a look at them and I you know there's sometimes where I have to say I'm sorry to say this, but I think you got taken advantage of.
Speaker 2:And this could be a product of a lot of things. It could be a product of a sleazy salesperson who just made a really nice commission on this poor person and they're paying for it Now. I mean, maybe 10 years from now they might start seeing a break Cause.
Speaker 1:the good part is they are locked in at that rate at APS Because their solar loan is paid off. You know they don't have that payment.
Speaker 2:The problem is it's probably about a 20 or 30 year loan 25 year loan so they're probably never going to really get ahead. They might reach a point where it's okay, but you're still you're going to lose so much to get to that point. The overall, you know yeah.
Speaker 1:When I'm quoting solar systems for customers, I need to see savings day, one day one year one. I want to see.
Speaker 2:I want to see something yeah, something, something yeah.
Speaker 1:Not paying almost a thousand dollars more the first year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not paying for a single year. I'm paying for a single year. So again it's got to be really close or it's got to be something, because you can't put yourself 10 years behind You're never going to catch it.
Speaker 1:They will see a savings. It just won't be right away. You're 18. Yeah, we've seen those, right yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a bad sales person that's doing taking advantage of somebody is what. I would say this is a consumer that didn't really dive in to kind of figure out. You know what it was going to do for them. I bet you and I'm looking at the payments of the. That's actually a 184 solar loan all the way across, yeah, so I wonder if it re-amortized, we're going to get into that stuff. But that's interesting because then it's going to give him worse.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yikes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I mean, you know, an unexperienced sales person is just going to look at their usage. They're just going to go oh, you use 24,623 kilowatt hours before solar, so I need to design a system that produces that yeah, which, as you can see, they did you know they produce, you know they have a system that produces that. But it didn't make sense for them to begin with because they didn't get the full story, all the information what was the rate beforehand and how much were they charging for solar and all that stuff?
Speaker 2:So we're going to talk about how loans work in a little bit here and you're going to see that this 184 a month is going to become probably 270 a month, yeah, in month 19. Even worse, and so this poor person's really they're never, they're probably never, going to see savings. Yikes, that's horrible.
Speaker 1:That's unfortunately how some people in this industry are, and this is why we're doing this podcast?
Speaker 2:Yeah, all our podcasts that we do. We're trying to protect you guys from being caught in this situation Because unfortunately, we just see this too often.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's a shame, but it happens and you got to protect yourself.
Speaker 1:I want to know your horror stories. So in the comment section you tell us your horror story. I mean, I don't want to hear it, but I feel like it's good to share it. Share the good share the bad I'd like.
Speaker 2:we'd love to share that with other people, but yeah this is unfortunate.
Speaker 2:I feel sorry for this person because there's not a whole lot they're going to be able to do. I know they're probably stuck. You can't even buy out of it. So, all right, a bad idea. That's definitely a bad idea. On to the next, let's talk about a somebody that we talked about offsets before. An offset is basically so if you produce 20,000, you use 20,000 kilowatt hours, let's say a year. If we give you a system that gives you 20,000 kilowatt hours, that's a hundred percent offset. A lot of people in the industry say well, I'll tell you what. I'll do one better. Let me sell you even a bigger system and give you a 200% offset, I'll produce. You can produce 40,000 kilowatt hours even though you only use 20, and that utility is going to buy all that back and you're going to be loving life.
Speaker 2:You're never going to have a bill.
Speaker 1:Raise your hand. If you had a sales prep set, you'll never have a bill with the APS.
Speaker 2:Ever, ever, you'll never, ever ever, ever have a bill with the APS. So here's an example of somebody and let you talk about it. It's a 200% offset. You think they ever had a bill let's talk about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, this is what I. You know, part of what I do at Harmon is I people call in. They have me analyze their bills, whether they're our customers or other. You know customers from other companies that went out of business or whatever. I analyze them, so I take a look at okay, what are you producing, what are you using? How much are you paying? What were you paying before solar? What were you paying after solar? So this is somebody that their solar production Every month is way over their usage. So at the very bottom you can see that the total usage is about 10,000 kilowatt hours. That's how much their home was actually using, but their solar system is producing 20,000 kilowatt hours, so it's producing twice.
Speaker 2:You know twice as much as they're using and again that power has to go somewhere.
Speaker 1:Utility company's gonna buy that. That's why you see a lot of those, all those negative bills on the right-hand side APS bill negative 75, negative 45, you know. So it's great not having a bill, but if you go down to the summertime because, again, like we've talked about, in the summertime you use more than you produce because we're running our AC is 24 7, it's 110 degrees even at middle of the night. So you're using more than you're producing and, as you can see, they're still. They still have a bill.
Speaker 1:Yeah for about what? Three, four months. Three, four months, which is great and fantastic. He's only paying a hundred and fifty two dollars but they have a year.
Speaker 1:But Bob on is if the sales rep says you'll never have a bill and then all of a sudden you get a bill in the summertime, you're gonna be upset. So it's good that a salesperson will kind of give you all the information. Yet Even though it's a 200% offset, which maybe this person has a lot of room on his roof for panels, right, they're still having a bill.
Speaker 2:So you're just spelling that myth?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it's true. Well, how about 300%? Then bed like okay, well, then maybe that $60 bill will be $30 or something.
Speaker 2:And you got to remember too, if it's APS, for instance I don't know if this is or not, but if this is APS, they're probably locked into a buyback rate for ten years. Yeah, and then year 11, the buyback rate is whatever APS is, buyback rate is that year. So who, if this, that this person got locked in at a eight, eight cent buyback rate, but ten years from now the buyback rate is two cents? Yeah, they're gonna lose big time in this scenario. Yeah, because for ten, that the next ten years, they're only gonna get two cents. So they're gonna get you know what, one fifth, one fourth of what the credit is now.
Speaker 2:Yeah so it's not a good scenario for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't put the solar payment on there because they didn't finance it. They paid cash on it, so it's kind of irrelevant, but if they did finance, it, then you got to put that into it as well. So then you're looking at well, you know, if I go too big, I still have to pay for that larger system. So now you're paying for a system that's twice as big as you need Be aware of the buyback rates.
Speaker 2:Yeah, whatever utility you work with, because again it's SRP 2.81 cents.
Speaker 1:That's it. It's tiny.
Speaker 2:You don't want to overproduce an SRP. No APS, I think it's seven four right now but it goes down 10% a year and they're trying to even get it lower. You need to understand how that's gonna fit into your financial equation, because if you go too big, eventually it's gonna get you. Yeah, so if you're paying nine cents to produce this, guy's probably paying about six or seven cents. Maybe, say six cents, maybe long, maybe lower. Let's say five cents.
Speaker 2:He's probably paying five cents to produce this power because you paid cash right, but eventually, if he starts paying the, if the buyback rate goes less than what he's paying, yeah, then he starts losing.
Speaker 1:He basically he bought power for five cents to give it away for three. For give a three, yeah, you don't want to do that, you're losing money in that, yeah, so in this case, he bought power for five cents, please, selling it for seven, which is great, right? But that's gonna change. That's gonna change in ten years, right?
Speaker 2:So so that that's a great example. I think we actually have the actual yeah, so this one this one's an okay, you know okay that he has 200%.
Speaker 1:Maybe I don't know what they keep the thermostat in the home. Maybe, if you know, want to make a little bit cooler. Or if they decide to get an electric car, you have that wiggle room right. You can, you know you, your bills aren't gonna be affected that much because that's okay.
Speaker 1:You know you have a negative a hundred thirty four dollars in April and you get decide again let your car Maybe it's now a negative eleven, you know make Negative a hundred and ten dollars in April. Right, still negative. So you have that extra room.
Speaker 2:So when we talked about an episode with Daniel, when we talked about proposals. I mean, if you have future events coming up or you're gonna put a pool in, you're gonna do a car or whatever, it's okay.
Speaker 2:We're gonna build a system that's a hundred twenty five percent or whatever, because you want to be ready for that event. That's gonna change, right. This is a little bit of overkill. Yeah, I Mean, but the other it makes sense. When I start seeing things like 200% or higher, I start questioning the motivation of the salesperson because, honestly, the bigger system they sell, the more money I make.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the reason why this one came across my desk was because of, as you can see, I got it recently. He was saying the sales guy said I wouldn't have a bill. In the past few months I've gotten bills, of course, like, okay, you should be happy with your hundred fifty dollars, a hundred fifty two dollars a year, which is great, yeah. But you know, whoever sold it to you was a little bit misleading, because you still do have bills in the summer, right. So, yeah, I mean he's happy because he's obviously saving money and I went through what he would have paid if he didn't have solar, but he was just a little upset that he was kind of misled that he would. You know I would never have a bill and he saw the first nine months that he didn't have a bill. But then summer rolls around and says guess what?
Speaker 2:you got a bill you got a bill, you got mail. Yeah, that's a great example. You don't see that very often for people that yeah. Kind of show you this in your face, and there's the actual bill that he had of. Where is it 65? Yeah, 65.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's. There's that highest bill. So, even though it's a huge system, it's. I Wasn't just making these numbers up on the spreadsheet, it was. There's his actual bill. There's his bill, yep.
Speaker 2:There's his credit. All right, good examples, thank you.
Speaker 1:That's really good. I worked hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I worked.
Speaker 1:I'm rough, rough was asking me like, oh, do we have examples of spreadsheets? And I was like you understand, I have a whole computer full of just data that I could share. So if you, if you want, you don't reach out. I have tons and tons of data. I love looking at these numbers.
Speaker 2:All right, so we've showed you savings and how it works. I think we've showed you pretty clearly that you can't afford to not go solar in most cases. You just need to understand where that applies to you, right? But you know, if you look at our grid again, you know it's just it could be crazy what you can spend. We're talking about you know 15, 16 cents for a ps. When we first started in this 10 years ago, it was you know nine ten.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm over there and the projection of the way things are going that you know, in 20 years it could be, you know, 30, 40 could be like Hawaii could be right, we could get that high. I mean it's very possible, we don't know. So I mean you have to protect yourself against that. So I mean you really need to take a look and see if it makes sense or not.
Speaker 1:It's, most of the time, what we've preached many, many times before, that you know solar isn't for everyone, but everyone should take a look, yeah that's.
Speaker 2:We should have a t-shirt made. Yeah, that's a really good. I mean, that's exactly what it's not for it. We should put that up at the home shows. Yeah, it's all ours. Not for everyone, but everyone should take a look.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that I can, because it's true, because it up and we just showed you why everyone should take a look, because some of yeah works. That was fantastic. Some of you run away from it, right? So all right, perfect. So now we've gotten. We've talked about savings. Now we're gonna talk about how do you, how do you purchase solar, what mechanisms are in place and what types of and what types of things, that there's purchases, there's lease, so I call this purchase versus lease just like buying a car or house.
Speaker 1:You know there's lots of different ways. Yeah, you can buy in cash, you can finance it, you can lease it. You know, we don't know to up to two scenarios.
Speaker 2:Right, cash purchase, finance, purchase versus at least. Yeah, all, right, so we'll put cash and finance in the same boat for now, versus a lease, because they're very different. Right? So there's ownership you purchase it, whether it's cash or finance. It's your equipment, you own it, there's the warranties on it and all that stuff. It's great, you have ownership.
Speaker 2:There's tax credits. We don't want to get too deep into that, but there's a 30% federal tax credit and there's only. There's a thousand dollar up to a thousand dollar state tax credit. So if you have a tax liability, you pick, which means if you pay the government money every year, you can have this tax credit to put against that, and that's awesome. So you know you spend. You know $30,000 on a system. You have $9,000 tax credit plus 90, $10,000 because you have the state one. So that's $10,000 you can put towards your liability.
Speaker 2:That makes a lot of sense, yeah, right, so a lot of us live in that situation and that that's when I would definitely look at a purchase versus a lease. Now, when you talk about a lease, you don't pay. You don't pay taxes right to the government because you never owe them money. They always owe you money or it's zeroes out so you can't take advantage of the tax credit. Well then there's a lease option, and the lease options kind of nice because the company that's giving you the lease, they take advantage of the tax credits, they use that tax credit and then they pass that savings on to you because they own it right because it's their system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're the ones who purchased it, it's not your system.
Speaker 2:It's their system. They maintain it and they monitor it. It's all on them. They give a production guarantee, they give warranties. So if it's not producing the way it should, they're gonna take care of it, because they need it to produce, because that's part of their Responsibility to you. They're gonna get the benefit of the credit, which is good for their business. It's basically a set it and forget it kind of system, right?
Speaker 2:You basically just put it on the roof. You buying, you're buying power. Yeah, you're paying for the power at a set kilowatt hour rate and that's it. It's not your system. Yep, that's a, that's a lease, in a nutshell, which, in today's times, is a really good, really good thing to have.
Speaker 1:Again, there's pros and cons to both. We're not going to push you to one or the other. There are companies who will say oh no, don't ever do a lease, leases are bad, like no, just because you don't offer leases, how about that? Or there's companies who will also say don't ever do a purchase, leases are the best, probably because you don't offer a purchase.
Speaker 2:At Harmon, we offer everything, so I mean that, again, we always talk about that. We give you all the options and whatever makes sense for you. That's the way you should go. We're not going to push you one way or another. If you want to own it and you want to take tax credits, maybe you want to own it. You don't care about tax credits? That's great. Okay, we'll do it, we'll let you own it. You want to pay cash? That's great. You want to finance it? That's great. Whatever you want to do, we're just going to show you what it looks like in each way. So I remember back in 2016, I want to say 2016, 2017, 98% of our business was leases. I mean, that's all we sold.
Speaker 1:It was very rare to see anything but a lease, because it made a lot of sense back then.
Speaker 2:With the way net metering worked back there and all that I mean.
Speaker 1:it was a, it was a no-brainer, absolutely no-brainer Purchases were an option, but at that time they were just weren't as good. It was weren't as good yeah.
Speaker 2:Didn't matter whether you had a credit or not, and they had prepaid leases where you could pay up front that one time.
Speaker 1:Those were fantastic, those were phenomenal. They were so good they got rid of them. Those were too good. Yeah, those were too good when people started realizing wait a minute.
Speaker 2:But things change, cycles change. It all depends on what the utility offering is and everything else, and then that dictates how this goes. But so you have a purchase option, a lease option. We kind of gave you kind of the differences around that and I'm not gonna go into any more slides. That's really the end of my slides and we're gonna just talk about. We're gonna talk about the different ways to buy a system. So let's get into that. It's like I said, there's cash, there's financing and there's lease. All right, cash is king. Sure, cash will always look the best.
Speaker 2:Just like buying a car or a house or anything. That you just you pay cash, you own it. There's no payments. So you basically just have your new bill from your new solar bill. So you have, you have no solar bill, you just have a new bill. You don't even have a solar bill.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:So that chart that we just talked about, you get rid of the orange part, yep, and you just have the new bill.
Speaker 1:And then you have to worry about your return on investment, which I'm sure we'll talk about with the financing. Right, we'll talk about that Because with cash, you have now an investment into it. So you wanna look at okay, now I'm saving money, but my APS or SRP bills are now going down. What's my return on investment Right?
Speaker 2:So I'm spending $20,000 on a solar system. How long is it gonna take me to get that 20,000 back? Right, and that's gonna be based on how much do I save each month, each year? Each? I can't talk Each month each year and I would say a really good scenario is five to six years. Yeah, that's typical, yeah, so if you're five, six years and you're earning your money back. Yeah, you're loving life.
Speaker 1:If you have a sales representative who's showing you a 12 year return on investment or something, maybe ask some questions Like why is this? Are we charging too much?
Speaker 2:On cash, on cash. Yeah Well, we're talking cash, right?
Speaker 1:now? Well, that's the only way to have a return on investment.
Speaker 2:Why not? But people talk about it in finance, which is dumb, I know. But yeah, so this is a cash conversation. Right, your return on investment should be probably five to seven years. Yeah, if it goes higher than that, start questioning. You get a double digit years on cash. You're getting charged too much.
Speaker 1:You're either getting charged too much or there's adders that you know about, like, oh I added a roof, or I added car chargers, or I added things like that True, and then they get that's your decision up front and you know you're impacting your return. Just a solar alone right, A 10 year return on investment. Sorry, I'm asking questions.
Speaker 2:So cash, cash is king. We love cash, cash, cash, cash. It's funny, harmon's internal business is probably 80% cash. Oh yeah, our customer base is very cash driven, yeah, so just saying Then there's financing. There are all sorts of solar finance companies out there.
Speaker 1:They Go ahead, and boy has the industry changed in the past year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say that our economy and inflation and our higher interest rates have impacted the finance model. Oh yeah, dramatically. Oh yeah, fees have gone up, interest rates have gone up. So, as those things you know, you have your savings here and as the fees and the interest rates go up, it starts shrinking your savings. Yeah, it's gotten to a point where in some cases it's just flip flopped. Yeah Right, so but you can finance solar. It's typically you can finance. It's really 10, 12, 15, 20 or 25 years.
Speaker 1:Just like buying a car, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean well, cars, don't think you do 20 or 25.
Speaker 1:Well, I know 15, but there's different options, different lengths. Right, there's different lengths.
Speaker 2:There used to even be a 30 year option. That one's gone away, yeah so. But you have those financing options and the rates, which were zero typically.
Speaker 1:Zero, zero four nine. Zero four nine was the lowest Zero nine nine, which was what, the year and a half two years ago Just 18 months ago. Yeah, Crazy. And then the White House said let's go.
Speaker 2:And so now, on the best rate you'll see, you're about 449 up to 1299. Depending on your credit, your credit drives a lot of that as well. Your typical credit score that you need is about, I would say, 640, is typical 650 around there. There are some lenders that'll go down to 600.
Speaker 1:But then you get what the fees are higher on those the fees are higher on those.
Speaker 2:So everything is driven by what your credit score is and the fees that apply with that and all that stuff, and those can be pretty high and impact your savings dramatically.
Speaker 1:And we're telling you all this to give you that ammunition for that toolbox, so you are more prepared than your solar rep who comes out and sits down and talks with you. You know it's like hey, I've been watching the Harmon Solar podcast, I know a lot about solar and financing and all that stuff, so let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Look at the number. So the one thing that I'll tell you is, when you're financing solar, look at the amount you're financing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's the best way to say it. Yeah, look at the total amount. I will tell you that there's an option out there. It's a credit union option that we have. It's a national credit union and in this market today it is by far the best option out there. It's pretty good. There's literally no fees in this loan. It's a $249 fee to join the credit union and do something else or whatever it was. Yeah, sign up fee, that's like your fee, and then the interest rates, about 7.99%, and you will see that that loan option by far is the best option that we have and it's the one that nine out of 10 of our dealers, our deals, go with. It's just a good option.
Speaker 1:But we have other ones. How many loan options do we have Not options, but companies.
Speaker 2:One, two, three, four, five right now See buffet of options. We have a buffet and some of the stuff is really good, so it just depends on you, depends on what you want.
Speaker 2:But we have the options to show you. We're not gonna guide you down one path. Me, I would go down the cash path. If I had to finance, I'd probably go down the credit union path. It just for me that's what makes the most sense. So, but we can show you all those different options. But again to Ben's point when you're getting pitched solar, make sure you look at this stuff and understand what these options are. Because here's the thing about solar loans. This is where they're a little different. So obviously you're getting a 30% tax credit for solar. A lot of people, when they're selling you solar, are gonna give you the number. They might say, okay, let's say your system is $50,000. They might come to you and say, well, it's not really 50, it's 35 because you have a 30% tax credit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, that's not bad. 35 grand, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:It's not 35, it's 50. It's 50. Okay, so don't deduct the tax credit.
Speaker 1:They're making assumptions Because here's what happens.
Speaker 2:Solar loans typically do something called a reamortization. So after 18 months the loan reamortizes. So what does that mean? So what that means is you get a $50,000 loan. That they're saying is 35. If you take that $15,000 of the tax credit and put it into the loan, pay the loan company 15,000, your new balance is not 20,000. Your new balance is 35,000.
Speaker 2:Which is what your initial loan payment is based on. So to keep your payment where it's at for month 19,. You've got to put that 15,000, that tax credit into that loan. That keeps your payment on and you're good to go. Let's say you don't do that, if you don't do it.
Speaker 2:So you get the sales guy and says hey, it's 15 grand, it's yours. Go buy a boat, go buy a car, go do this, go do that. So don't do it. Okay, we'll find. So let's say you don't do it, that $35,000 loan is now a $50,000 loan and the payment reflects the change.
Speaker 1:Off of 50,000.
Speaker 2:So that 180 payment is now 270, as an example. So month 19,. Your new bill is $270. You better have accounted for that $90 increase in month 19, because that is real and that's what happens. And don't let anyone tell you that that is not part of a solar loan, because they're a liar. It's every solar loan period. It's how it works.
Speaker 1:Yep, ask your sales rep how it adjusts like that they better tell you. Right, it should be in the paperwork.
Speaker 2:So when you say, well, this $180 payment, that's perfect, because I was paying 200 before, so I'm good, I'm saving 20 bucks, right.
Speaker 2:Now all of a sudden month 19,. You're $70 behind. Now I'm paying more. You're paying more because now you get your solar loan at $70 more, plus you're paying your bill to the utility. Now you're in that situation that we were just showing you. Now imagine that poor person when it re-amortizes, when it re-amortizes at month 19. Wow, it's gonna go up even higher, right? So re-amortization is real. Now the one credit union that we have. What they do is the loan amount is the loan amount, and they charge you the payment on that loan amount and then they give you it's flipped.
Speaker 1:It's flipped. They show it flipped.
Speaker 2:And they give you three options where you can put into the loan 10% at any time, three different times during the life of the loan, and if you do that, it drops the payment. If you don't do that, then don't do it and the payment is what it is. It never changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, in summary, a lot of sales reps will show you the fantastic low payment and they'll kind of ignore the high payment because they don't want to show you that this loan options is perverse. It shows you, hey, this is the highest it'll ever be.
Speaker 2:Worst case scenario.
Speaker 1:Worst case scenario, and it's only going to go down if you decide to put the tax credits towards it, and if you don't, then don't. They don't. Well, at least you know what the highest payment ever was. So, and even that highest payment is still pretty good. Yeah, it is pretty good.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say when you're signing your paperwork or you're looking at your paperwork, look at right below the payment. There's typically a sentence or two and it's usually in the proposal as well, and it talks about this loan will re-amortize at this amount. If you don't see that number anywhere, ask Say what's the re-amortized amount on this loan if I don't pay the tax credit? You have to know that number and use that number to determine if this is a good thing for you or not.
Speaker 1:Don't use the good number, cause that's going away. And, if you want, I know this is not a service that we publicly advertise. If you do have quotes from other companies. We'll take a look. I'll take a look. I'll be honest. I'm sure Ralph is not gonna like me saying this right now. I have looked at other solar proposals from other companies that are like legitimate companies like that we are, and I would look at their deal and go that's a good deal, Go with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've done that more than once.
Speaker 1:I have no problem doing that. So if you are hesitant about your quote, is it? If it seems too good to be true and you think your salesperson's you know being dishonest, send it to us. We'll take an honest look at it and go yeah, you know, here's the reality of it. They're not telling you this or this and that, and we'll give you an honest opinion on what it really is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would say that. Understand what the tax credit is and how it works. Talk to an accountant yes. Talk to H&R Block at Walmart. Do whatever you gotta do, but ask the questions not to a solar sales guy that's trying to sell your solar and make commission, but to an actual tax professional that can help you understand what's real and what's fake, Because you need to understand. Do you even have a liability to qualify?
Speaker 1:for this. Is this real thing for you, your tax situation, not what your sales rep is telling you your sales. Your tax situation is yours.
Speaker 2:Right, make sure it's gonna work for you, make sure it makes sense for you, because you did the homework and you found out, because, again, the guy across the table is trying to sell you something to make money. So he's got his best interest in mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know you need to have your best interest in mind. Yeah, when he comes to your house and says, yeah, you'll get the tax credit, how do you know I'll get it? No, you don't know my tax situation.
Speaker 2:You're gonna get this, you're gonna get that. You don't know anything about that If they didn't ask you remember we've talked about this in previous episodes is what's red flags there are for my salesperson? Are they asking this? Are they asking that? I mean go back and watch that. You need to understand those things because it puts you in this scenario where you can really this can really hurt you.
Speaker 1:As you saw, as you saw on the previous slides.
Speaker 2:That person is in a bad situation. They're not getting out of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Unless they get an infusion of cash from somewhere.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the sad reality of it too. You can't really go to court with that one situation.
Speaker 2:Like, you signed everything.
Speaker 1:The court's gonna look at like that's your signature on every single document that you agree to.
Speaker 2:So You're stuck, you're stuck.
Speaker 1:And that's why there's a lot of bad publicity with Solars, because people don't know what they're signing. They get into it and they realize, oh, this was a horrible decision. But now I'm stuck for 20 years.
Speaker 2:We'll get that phone call saying hey, can you come take this off my roof, because I don't want that. I'm gonna buy a system from you. No, it's too late. It's too late. There's nothing you can do, yeah, so yeah, that's just a sad reality.
Speaker 1:I'm not gonna give that money to you.
Speaker 2:It's not going away.
Speaker 1:It's not going away. So and then?
Speaker 2:so we've talked cash, we've talked financing and last we've kind of touched on leases but leases.
Speaker 2:Again, you don't own the system. A leasing company owns it. They take the tax credit on it and you basically are just buying that kilowatt hour or power from that system from them. Maintenance free, worry free. If something goes wrong, it's their system, they take care of it. They give you production guarantees. If you produce less in a year, then you've got a lot of money. So You've got to make sure that you have in a year than you should have. They typically will cut you a check at the end of the year.
Speaker 1:Or credit your account. Or credit your account. If you're paying monthly for it, they credit your account. Yeah, one or the other.
Speaker 2:I think I give you the option but either way, you're still getting that money, you're getting that credit. If it's not producing, they're gonna go and see what's wrong with it and they're gonna have us come out and fix it. I mean, so it's in their best interest to monitor that system to ensure that it's doing what it needs to do, because if it doesn't, it costs them money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a major difference between purchases and leases too, because when a leasing company owns the system and it underproduces, they credit you the difference. When you own the system, you own it, you're not crediting yourself from the difference.
Speaker 1:So if it underproduces, if something goes wrong which it's gonna happen but if it underproduces, no one's writing you the check because you own it. So you have to be on top of your monitoring. You have to make sure that you monitor it. So when something goes wrong you're like, hey, my bill is pretty high. Why is that? You need to contact us as soon as possible because it's your system, your responsibility. No one's writing you a check for that loss. Production like Elise.
Speaker 2:Let me make that really. I'm gonna say this really clear Harmon does not monitor your solar system. We do not monitor them at all. You are responsible to monitor that system. If you don't, and it's not producing, and then you call us and say my system has been producing for six months, okay, we'll come fix it and we do the warranty work, but we're not paying you anything because it's your job to monitor it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those six months. Why didn't you contact us before?
Speaker 2:And if you have Elise, they're monitoring it because they wanna make sure they fix it, because they don't wanna pay you. So that's the difference and here's my caveat. Last episode, the last part of this episode, we talked about Tesla inverters. Here's a cool thing about Tesla they monitor their inverters. If it's not working, you get an email and they contact the installer and they go fix it. Period, whether you financed it, Elise, whatever they do. That that's a really cool thing that Tesla does. They don't wanna write the check.
Speaker 1:They just wanna make sure you're taken care of.
Speaker 2:So they monitor their equipment Pretty cool. They monitor their batteries, they monitor inverters, but Harman doesn't. Harman does not, yeah, but they act like a leasing company when you buy equipment from them. Okay, because they want their equipment to work. Yeah, so that's a benefit of the Tesla inverter pretty cool, so just threw that in there. So there you go cash financing and lease. Those are your options. That's how you're getting, so that there's no other way I can think you can get it, unless I just gives it to you. Yeah, happy birthday.
Speaker 1:Happy birthday.
Speaker 2:Here's a system or we give one away, we give one away. We gave a couple of way actually in contest previous years but yeah, we should do another one. Those no um, so in summary, so in this part of the episode you know we've gone through the savings. I hope you understand the short-term, long-term savings and how they work. Yep, we've actually looked at some real bills and showing you good bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bad was ugly bad was very bad right, but we gave you an idea of how that works. We've gone through how you purchase systems.
Speaker 1:You know finance, cash purchase, yeah, these and and, to kind of piggyback off that if you do want to see Similar bills, you know, let us know. Yeah, because I have again.
Speaker 1:I've done Hundreds and hundreds of these for lots of different customers. Not necessarily because customers are unhappy. We do get customers who call in and say hey, I just want to make sure everything's going good. My bills are low, but I just want to make sure everything's fine, so I'll do an analysis for them. Go, yep, everything looks good. Here's your savings, all that stuff. So I have a lot of data. So if I'm if I'm using 15,000 kilowatts in my home and I'm paying this much, do you have any other homeowners who are in the same boat that got, so are what were their bills? Afterwards, I can show you those bills. I have examples of people who are in the same situation as you so we can compare, see what it actually looks like.
Speaker 2:And great point. And the last thing that I'm going to say is, when someone pitches you solar, make sure you take your time to make a decision. Yes, there's this thing in the industry called the one-call close. I don't recommend that. Unless it's a really reputable company, then in the situation looks really good and you just you've done your homework and it makes a lot of sense. But we always tell people get more than one quote.
Speaker 1:Unless it's Harmon. No, I'm kidding, even harm. Get more than one quote. I tell them, get one more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would get at least a two minimum. Get quotes. Trust your gut. When you feel like something's wrong, do the homework, ask the questions and if you're not getting the answers, move on to the next person.
Speaker 1:I don't even like the word close. I don't even use it. I don't say I close the deal, I close. This is like any hope. You don't close doors on people. I open relationships or person does I know? But if you know, if the solar system is sold, you know, and I sold the source of some. I've opened up a relationship. Yeah, I didn't close it.
Speaker 2:We're creating partnerships.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now we're. Now we're together, right? I agree with you and that's what we do is we try to again Consultative education.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's why we started this podcast and, you know, give you the ammunition to make the right decisions. I hope you learn something Good from this solar 101 two-part episode. There's a lot of great information in here. I mean, this is, this is the meat and potatoes, this is really where. This is where it hits the road.
Speaker 1:Yep, right, so With that, on that note, on that note. Ben, what do we got next?
Speaker 2:You know, I even know, I think, I Think we're gonna do, I think we're gonna bring in a project manager, okay, and we're gonna go over and.
Speaker 1:I know you're a project manager. Can I sit over there?
Speaker 2:No, oh, we might bring it. We might bring in our Oklahoma project manager, who actually is starting to do some Stuff over in Arizona now too, between him and you, to talk about the project management experience and how that works and kind of what the customer would expect as far as interaction with a project manager will probably go there next. Okay, I think that makes sense. That's good.
Speaker 1:And, like always, if you have other ideas for other projects. I mean, we have a whole list but already.
Speaker 2:But you know, if you want yeah, we're just going down the path, we're just trying to go down the path we got. We straight away from it for a couple episodes. Yeah but we'll probably go back into it again next time, and I really want to bring some customers in as well. That.
Speaker 1:I've gone through the experience and kind of talk to you guys. If you are a Harman solar customer, yeah.
Speaker 2:If you're a customer and you have interest in joining us on this podcast. Definitely reach out to us. Food will be provided week Food and dogs food and dogs who be friend.
Speaker 2:So thank you for tuning in again. I hope this. I hope this was Something. We learned something. I hope you got a lot out of this. If you have any questions, comments, please reach out to us. You know how to reach us 800 281 31 89. Harman solar calm. Like subscribe our podcast. We're doing this for you. This is why we're doing this. We love doing this. This is our eighth episode. This is part two, so that was nine episodes.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:So we're just, we're gonna keep going, and going, and going until there's nothing more to say.
Speaker 1:It's an ever-evolving industry, so I guess we'll keep going and you're right, it is ever-evolving.
Speaker 2:But like subscribe. Find us on all the socials all the socials, all the, all the places that you listen to podcast. You know Spotify, itunes we're all there Harman solar podcast, or join us, or go to Harman solar comm slash podcast. It has a hot podcast cage that will link to our YouTube page and you can see all our episodes there. So thanks again for joining us and we'll see you next time. Thank you.