Let's Talk Solar That Fits Your Situation

The solar industry has changed — and so have the options available to homeowners.

In this episode of the Harmon Solar Podcast, Ralph Romano and Ben Wollschlager break down the new era of solar and why today’s solutions are more flexible than ever. After a major industry shift and the removal of traditional residential tax credits, many homeowners are left wondering: Does solar still make sense? The answer might surprise you.

Ralph and Ben walk through three powerful options now available, including ownership with potential tax incentives, prepaid solar for upfront savings, and a fixed-rate lease designed to protect you from rising utility costs. They also introduce a unique approach involving independent tax advisors who help homeowners uncover incentives many people don’t even realize still exist.

This episode is all about cutting through misinformation and giving you real, practical insight into how solar can fit your specific situation — whether you’re buying, financing, or just exploring your options.

If you’ve ever been told there’s only one way to go solar… this episode is for you.

Harmon Solar — Solar That Fits Your Situation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The solar energy market has become increasingly saturated, leading to widespread misinformation and a lack of transparency. Welcome to the Harmon Solar Podcast, offering a straightforward, honest perspective on going solar. Each episode dives into key topics to help you better understand the industry. Our goal is to educate and empower you to make informed decisions about solar energy. While solar may not be the right fit for everyone, we believe everyone should take the time to explore it. Our mission is to increase your knowledge, not your builds.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Welcome to another edition of the Harman Solar Podcast. I'm Rob Romano, VP of Sales and Marketing at Harman Solar, and with me, my partner, as always, Mr. Ben Walshlager. You guys know him as Mr. Everything.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Something's different, Ralph. What's different? You can't tell. I can't. There's something a little different about our setup today.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

We're hovering over our seats.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Yeah. We are not actually, we're not even close to our seats because I'm supposed to be over there and you're over here. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Oh, yeah, we're in different seats.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

We're not in different seats, and we're not even in the studio. Nope. We're in the old studio.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

We're in the old studio.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah. Why is that? Well, a little different podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

I didn't want to go to work.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Sounds about right.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

No, I we're going to do something a little different. We're going to talk about uh our new offerings. We have a PowerPoint presentation. And I can't. I kind of wanted to show slides and kind of talk through the slides. So you'll see our our guest is a PowerPoint presentation. We got a guy. I could have gave him a title and everything. His name's PowerPoint. But you know, I think it's important now as we are um almost through March, which is amazing. And it's a hundred billion degrees outside, which is unbelievable. We are shattering records.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

We are. I think I heard like we beat the high temperature record by 11 degrees today. Like not like usually when you beat record temperatures, it's like one or two, but no, we beat by 11. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

It's hot.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

It is.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

And it's funny because our our lead flow has gone from like here to here in a week, which is just typical. We're weather driven.

SPEAKER_03 2:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Um, but you know, we've coming, we've come off 2020 2025, and everything that happened there, and the ITC, the residential cash credit going away, and it's changed the entire solar industry, right? So we've seen it where um a lot of solar companies have actually gone out of business. They've left the market, and that's a good thing. Yeah, because a lot of them needed to leave. A lot of them clean up shop. Yeah, they were they were the people that were making so much money that it was stupid, so now they can't do that anymore and they don't want to be in the market. Crazy how that works. Yeah, it's amazing how that works. Um, but then there's companies like us, and there's only there's a few of us, um, and we love this, right? So we we had to kind of take a step back and go, what are our offerings gonna be going forward? And we've been playing with different things. I think we talked about it on our last podcast too, but we are now set.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

We're good.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

And I'm here to tell you, this is the best offering. What can I call it? Offering ensemble, offering board.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Buffet, a buffet of options, a buffet of options.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

These are the best options that we have ever had in the 13 years I've been here.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

They're pretty good. They are really good. We are turning the clock back on these. Right.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

I was surprised. Yeah, I really was. I was like, man, this is this is good. This is really good. So today we're gonna go over that and we're gonna talk about Harman Solar, because we have the solar options that fit your situation. So often in this industry, and Ben's talked about it before, where guys come into your home and they're just pitching what they sell, which is typically one thing. They don't care about your situation, they care about their situation. Well, we care about your situation, and we have the three options that fit any situation you possibly could have. So we have an option for you. So that's why you see the title of the slide, solar that fits your situation. Arizona homeowners are all the same. Your solar options shouldn't be either. And that's a really true statement.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Yeah, it is. If you've ever been in a presentation with a solar sales company and they said, like, you should get a lease, and here's our here's the options. Right. Or the opposite. Don't ever get a lease. Don't ever get a lease. You should always do a purchase, and here's and here's why. This podcast is for you.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Yes, it is. Yes, because we are gonna show you the options that we have that fit your needs. I guarantee you, if you're watching this podcast, is there a disclaimer or something? You will fit in one of these categories.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

You will you have to unless you are no longer living. That would be the only way.

Three Options That Actually Fit

SPEAKER_02 4:35

So if you're dead, don't watch this podcast. If you're watching this, then I want to know how that's happening. Hi, mom. Um, okay, so here we go. Here we go. So we're gonna get into the solar that fits your situation. So we have three very flexible options. Number one is ownership with potential for tax incentives. What? I thought those were gone. So did I.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Oh, did we just lie to everyone?

SPEAKER_02 5:03

We did. We're gonna talk about that. Second is a prepaid solar option where you can get a 25 to 30 percent discount up front. Interesting. Third option, the fixed option. I call it the nine cent fixed lease option where we will fix your power cost for the next 25 years. It will never escalate. Never. That's pretty cool. That's pretty good. I guarantee you you fit in one of those categories. Ben, which category do you fit in?

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Um, well, I mean, we could really fit into any one of them.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Well, let me don't have money.

unknown 5:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

You could fit in any one of them. Well, it and that's kind of an interesting thing, too, because some people could fit in multiple ones. Yeah. So it all depends.

Ownership With Incentive Screening

SPEAKER_02 5:52

I think I fit in two of them. Yeah. Yeah, two of them. Maybe three. Maybe three, maybe four. I might be trifiddle. Yeah. I'm either, I'm not sure, but I'm gonna say all three, probably. You're right. We probably both fit in all three. Yeah. And I'm sure a lot of people fit in all three. Yeah. So it just comes down to what you feel good about. Yeah. Right. So let's get into this very quickly. So, solar ownership of potential for tax incentives. So, right away, that first question came up is what? I thought they were gone, right? So, this option, if you have a tax liability, Ben, what's a tax liability?

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Um, are we allowed to say this on the on the air? Are we?

SPEAKER_02 6:31

Yeah, we're not gonna get we're not giving advice. We're just liability.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

A tax liability is if you owe taxes. That's it. That's it. I don't I can make it more confusing if you like, but it's if you owe taxes. When you do your taxes and you're like, oh, I owe the government. Yeah. That's a tax liability. That's a liability. If you get a refund, that's not a tax liability. That's a non-libility.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Right. That's a ability.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Ability.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

So that's my first bullet point. Second is do you want to own your solar system? Some people want to own their solar system. Just depends. Um potential for federal tax credit opportunities. We're gonna get into what that means, but there is in this scenario, you can, if you qualify, get federal tax incentives. Part of this gig, when we do this appointment for you, and if you fall into this into this category, we are gonna give you, not us. Don't say we, we have a solution that will give you an independent professional tax consultation. It's included as part of this appointment. You will actually get to get on the phone with an independent tax advisor who will go over your personal situation and what this could mean for you as far as money that you can get back on this system.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

How many times have we mentioned that Harman Solar, we are not tax professionals? A hundred times. At least. And we still aren't. And we're still not. But what we're doing is we're like, we're not tax professionals, but they are. So go talk to them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

So we want you to talk to this independent tax advisor who will call you either while we're in the home or the next day to go over your personal situation.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

And what's interesting about these guys is um they're not just regular tax advisors, they know the solar side of it. Yes. You know, I'm sure your tax guy, you're like, Oh, I have a tax guy, but does he know the solar side of the taxes? That's right. These guys do.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

They've been doing this for eight years, and that's what they do. And they haven't changed the way they're doing it. They do it whether last year happened or not. They continue to do it the same. And it's just, it's kind of an I wish I would have known about this seven years ago. Yeah. Because we could have helped people even more. And then my final point would be some homeowners, some homeowners may qualify for additional incentives depending on their tax situation. So yeah, there are more than just the one in, like we always used to focus on the 30% ITC. There's just other things too.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah, you could get more that I wasn't aware of.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

And and we are seeing that.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

More than the 30%.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Did you hear that? Should we say it again? More than the 30% is could be a possibility.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

We're seeing an average of about 48%. I know, right? And there's other opportunities. It's kind of crazy.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Almost half off your solar system.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

It's kind of crazy. So, like I mentioned before. So before moving forward, we we come and we we show you we need a couple things from you. So we need um it's it's an income from you. We need an income from the previous tax year off of one of the line items of your of your 1040. I can't remember the exact one. We ask you for that, though.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Adjusted gross, probably.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

Adjusted gross income from a certain line. Okay. So uh we our guys would ask you for that. And then how you file single, married, jointly, single, however, you file. That's the only information we need up front to then put it in the calculator to determine possibly what you could qualify for, as far as a um an incentive. Nice. So we ask you that information. Um, we show you what it could potentially look like, and then you go, because that's what everyone's doing. Shocked. They're like, wow. You have to, it's part of the agreement. You have to be shocked. You have to do it, and we have to record to do it. Yep. Um, and then what'll happen is we won't let you move forward at that point. We're gonna show you what we know. Again, we're not tax experts, we're the solar experts. And at that point, then before you move forward, we're gonna set up this consultation with this independent solar tax professional who's gonna review your personal situation, determine the incentives that you may qualify for, and ensure that everything is structured correctly. So the cool thing is these guys, as part of this deal, will then once you go solar with us and you get installed and all that, then we let them know that you're done and you're you're installed. They then communicate with you. And these guys will either do one of two things. They will prepare the paperwork for your accountant to go ahead and file the taxes, or they will file them and do your taxes for you.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Now you have a tax guy person.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

You got a guy. You got a guy. That's a pretty cool scenario. That's pretty nice, right? So, and there's all these things around that. And the, and I gotta tell you, uh, we you know how Harman is. We vet everyone and everything. And this was an impressive group.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you're wondering, well, if the tax credits went away, then how are we able to get the tax credits, Ralph?

SPEAKER_02 11:23

We just take them.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

I just take them. Well, the the the answer to that is the residential tax credits went away.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

That's it. It's all that's what we're talking about anymore.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Yeah, we're not doing that right now.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

This has nothing to do with residential tax credits. Yeah, there are other tax credits.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

But there's other tax credits that you could take advantage of, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

Right? And they're just as good if not that actually from what we've seen, they're better. Yeah, actually better. So yeah, this is pretty amazing. And I guess what really struck me was number one, the conversations we had with them were for which were fantastic. But number two was that they've been doing this for seven, eight years and they didn't change their business model because of what happened last year. They've been always doing this for people that have solar. They've been doing it for seven years. This is nothing different. So they just keep doing what they're doing. It just works out better now for us as an industry because we need it. Yeah. Right. So and the cool thing is Harmon's the only, there's only one other company that they're very smart.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

I was just about to ask, is this a Harmon only thing or is this an everyone thing?

SPEAKER_02 12:16

It's almost a Harman only thing. What I like about this company is they won't work with everybody. They when they originally started, they were working with quite a few people and they stopped because they quickly realized what this what's in this industry. Not the most ethical people sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Shocked.

Adding Batteries With Retroactive Savings

SPEAKER_02 12:33

And they don't want to partner with people like that because they're a very ethical company and they want to help you, just like Harmon wants to help you. So they were a really good fit for us. And uh so they've gotten rid of a lot of the people they used to work with, they don't do it anymore. So they're not really working with a whole lot of people anymore. In the state of Arizona, at least. Good for them. Yeah, I I thought that was a really good move. Yeah. So to talk through this again. If you have a tax liability and you want to buy solar, just like before the end of 2025, but you want to take advantage of any incentives, federal incentives, that opportunity still exists. It's just it's just through it, it's just different, but it still does exist. And the opportunity is actually even better. It's better than ever. And there's more? There's more. Let's wait. There's more. Let's say you've already got a solar system in the last three, four years. And let's say you want to add a battery now, right? Because a lot of people, we're getting a lot of battery and uh questions now. People want to go back out of the batteries. There's a way through this organization, um, they can help you look back at what incentives you got from that system and find more incentives. Then take that money and put it on top of the incentives you're gonna get for this battery to help you pay for the battery. In some cases, people are saving half. In some cases, they even said people are saving almost the entire cost of the battery.

unknown 14:00

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

It just depends on your again. This is all driven by your situation, your income, all these things. That's intriguing.

SPEAKER_03 14:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Because I know everybody wants to add a battery, but it's like, man, they're so expensive. Maybe they're not. Maybe they're not. Yeah. Not through this. So, this is another thing that you could think about. I already got solar. Did you take advan full advantage of everything? Are you sure? Or did you just take care of the 30% tax credit? How would you like to use some of that that could be available that you didn't even realize on this battery you want to buy, or you want to add a couple panels, or you, whatever it is you're doing, right? There's an opportunity potentially. So really exciting, exciting for us, this product.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Ben, do you have any questions? Yeah, I was just gonna say, so you know, a lot of these times on these podcasts, we're doing it for people who are looking to get solar. This is also helpful for people who already have solar and they want to get even more savings. Yeah. More tax credits back.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

If you've been within the certain window, and I think it's three to five years, if you've had solar in the last three to five years and you want to do more, these guys could help you. Awesome. So we can help you and we can introduce them to you. Okay. Next slide. I love this. I'm really, I'm really excited about that. So everyone assumes solar tax soot tunies have gone away. For some homeowners, they may actually be better than before. And for some of you, this will do nothing. But that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

We have other options for you.

Prepaid Lease With Big Discount

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Right. We do have other options. So that's option A. You you have a tax liability, you want to go solar, or you've already gone solar and you want to do some more. This is for you. Give us a call. We can we can talk you through this. Now, let's go to the next option. So it's called a prepaid solar lease. It's kind of a lease. Kind of. Yeah, kind of sort of. So, what this is best for, let's say you do not have a tax liability. You don't, you can't take advantage of any kind of a tax liability. It's just not who you are.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

All right. People like fixed incomes, you know, retired, or if you're getting a refund every year, things like that.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Right. And you have some money available. So you could buy a system. You got the money for it, but you just can't get any incentive out of it because that residential solar incentive is gone. And you don't have a liability anyway. And you don't want to pay the full price. Right. And you don't want to pay the full price, and you have no liabilities, and you're like, man, I can do what's called a prepaid lease for you. And what that's gonna do is you're gonna pay up front, one one cost up front, no more payments, nothing. You're done. You're gonna pay your prepay for it. Just like a cash purchase. Right. Just like a cash purchase. So there's no monthly solar payments. And as a prize, that's behind door number one. You're gonna get 25 to 30% off the price of your system. 25% for a solar only system, 25%, 30% for solar and battery. Right off the top. Yep. We're gonna reduce the price 25 to 30%. Just like if you were getting a tax credit before. But you wouldn't have gotten it before because you didn't have a liability then either. So I'm basically by by making this a prepaid lease, you're getting the advantage of this 25 to 30% discount in this lease.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

You remember, I don't know, what was it like eight to 10 years ago? They had all those prepaid leases. Those were fantastic. If you took advantage of the prepaid leases 10 years ago, you are sitting pretty. Yes. And then they went away and everyone was like, What? You don't have those like I'm sorry, that they're just not available anymore. But guess what? Now they're back. That's that's what this is. This is a prepaid lease. It's back again.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Yep. And I put I really pushed this for the person that has the cash. You know, because I could tell you that if you wanted to finance the prepaid part, you can, but it takes away from what you're saving because now you've got a loan and you have interest. I'm not saying you can't do it. We can do that for you, but uh uh it doesn't excite me as much.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

We have a better option if you want to do that.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Yeah, it doesn't this doesn't excite me. Right. Right. But it's there if you really wanted it. Yeah. So prepaid lease. Um, what so I'll give you the upsides. The upside, you get 25%, 30% off, you know, so blah, blah, blah. Um, this particular lease, and I always say lease, uh, it doesn't have some of the protections of a traditional lease, doesn't have a performance guarantee, and it doesn't have like a 20 or 25 year bump it or bumper everything on it. It just goes by manufacturer warranties. Right. So whatever manufacturer warranty runs for those equipped for the equipment pieces, that's what you get on this lease. Right. So I almost call it a lease by name.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

Right? Because it's not really a traditional lease.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Because you technically don't own it. Somebody else does.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

Right. Somebody, it's third-party owned. And I can tell you that once you hear what can and why are they doing this? Why are they giving you 25 to 30% off? Because what they're gonna do is they're gonna take the commercial tax credit and then they're gonna take depreciation on your system for five years. So they're gonna make their money that way.

SPEAKER_03 18:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

And then after that five, six year period, I can guarantee you they're gonna come to you and they're gonna say, Do you want the system? It's yours now if you want it. You can have it. I'll sell it to you for fair market value. Yeah. FMV if you want it, um, whatever that cost is. I don't know what that'll be. It could be a dollar, it could be a hundred dollars, could be a thousand. I have no idea. Yeah. Depends who you talk to. But they're probably gonna be that you're probably in this scenario, whoever's doing a prepaid lease, that's probably what you're gonna see happen over a period of five or six years. Once they've made their money on it, since they're not offering you all the benefits, they probably don't want to keep it on their books. At that point, they would want you to buy it or take it over, whatever. So that's the other side of this, what it is. So just want to give you both sides of it. It's good and good, and I don't know if that's bad, but it's just different.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

Yeah, yeah. I don't think pros and cons are good and bad is the right verbiage, but it's here's what it is and what it isn't.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

What's next?

SPEAKER_02 19:44

And why just real quick, why would some people choose this? We kind of talked about it. You don't have a liability, but you have the cash. There's no monthly payment, protection from rising utility rates, of course, always, and large upfront discount. You can't discount the fact that they're giving you 25 to 30 percent off right up front. That's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Since we're paying a cash, what's the return on investment typically that you're seeing?

SPEAKER_02 20:04

On these?

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

Um, what I've seen is it depends. Now it really depends on product like production and other things. Sure. Eight years. Okay. Not bad. That's yeah. Average. That's better than the market. Some are maybe a little higher, some are a little lower. Yeah. I think I saw one that was well, I saw one on the on the other one where the where you were buying it and then going through the tax professionals and all that, the return on it was um five years. That's like eggs. That's five year return on investment. Amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Right. So if you have the cash, the kind of a summary of the two options, you're looking at at between a five and eight-year turn on investment. That's pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

Yeah. Depend, and it could go higher depending on your situation.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Lots of things. I don't want to lock us into five to eight. Right. Because it could be 10. Nope. Eight years and one day, Ralph. Nope. I won't get locked. I'm afraid. Right. Less than 50.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

How about that? Less than 50. And then this is pretty phenomenal, too. I have to admit. This is killer. You have no tax liability, you have no money, you're like Ben.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

This this is your everyday consumer, obviously. This is the everyday job. Probably going to be the most popular because people are looking, you know, they don't with in this economy, no one has cash laying around for this. So you're looking at, you know, what can I do monthly and still save money.

The Nine Cent Fixed Lease

SPEAKER_02 21:22

So Harman is part of a group, a national group of 95 dealers. So 95 Harmons out there. Not all called Harmon. But there's 95 of us in this network. In the nation. And because there's 95 of us, we can go and talk to manufacturers and talk to companies and try to get better offers for our customers. Hence this lease. So because we're part of this group, we we use our we've talked about our lease partner before, which is um Palmetto Lightreach. That's our lease partner. Um, and you've met you've met Aaron before on this. Podcast and um we have a deal with them where we get a nine cent solar lease. What does that mean? So the lease costs nine cents. Nine cents. I'll buy that. Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Can I give them a diamond? What does that mean? Tell me, give it a change. Nine cents. So a lot of people don't understand what a cost per kilowatt hour is because it's you pay what you pay on your bill. You get the APS or SRP bill and you just pay it. Nine cents per kilowatt hour is think of it as like your price at the pump. Right now, gas is close to five dollars a gallon. In APS, you're probably looking at about 20 to 25 cents per kilowatt hour. SRP, you're probably about a 13 to 15 cents per kilowatt hour. But that's not advertised really anywhere. You have to kind of do the math. If you want to know what your price per kilowatt hour is, it's pretty easy. You just look at your bill. What was my price you paid? And then on the bill, it shows your kilowatt hour. So just divide those two numbers. That's your price per kilowatt hour.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

So you take your bill, dollar amount, dollar amount, divide it by the amount of kilowatt hours you you've used.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Which also shows on the bill. Yep. And you'll get your number. You get your price at the gallon or price at the pump. Price at the pump. Yeah, we we know what gas prices are because they're everywhere. Everywhere we drive, we see gas prices. That's price per gallon. Yep. Nine cents per kilowatt hour is the price for this solar lease.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

And the next bullet point, this is very critical, zero percent escalator. What is the knock on leases out there?

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Escalators. It's escalators. It goes up one to three percent per year. So every year your your monthly payment goes up just a little bit. And a lot of sales companies will, you know, kind of trick you into that because it starts off at a very low payment and they say, like, well, utility rates are increasing by five percent, and your lease is only going to increase by three percent. So you're beating them. Like, well, yes, but can you just make it not increase? Can that be an option? Can you just have it fixed and stay there?

SPEAKER_02 24:00

And there's truth and not truth to that. Yeah. Because like as the APS, yeah, their rates are going up every every year. SRP, they just lowered their rates. Lower their rates, yes. Like a penny or something. Right. Not even a penny. It was a tenth of a penny.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

And a lot of times those those five percent, like you know, APS with if they raise it five percent, that's an average. Right. You know, there was a time they didn't raise rates. Yeah. But your escalator would have gone up. Right.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

So we can't predict the future. What the salesperson's gonna tell you is of course it's gonna go up. Everything goes up, and you're probably right.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

And it's gonna start as a at a very low, attractive monthly payment. That's the difference. You're looking at that like, wow, that's super cheap. Yeah, it's super cheap now, but in five years, you'd be like, wait a minute, this is actually going on.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

Let me tell you why they do this. There's a reason.

unknown 24:44

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

I gotta whisper. Give them out, give out the secrets. I'm telling you, they're no one, no one else listen. Everybody be quiet. Don't listen. The reason they do this is because when they get that lower payment and they put that high escalator on it, they make more commission.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Yeah, I know it's all about making money.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

A lot more. A lot more.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Yes. They can make more money doing this because it shows the savings the first year.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Five, six, seven, eight years. Like, wait a minute. Right. Wait a minute.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

So your payment can go from$120 in the first year to$190 year 10, whatever it is. I mean, I don't know, but yeah, it just goes up every single year. Right. What our program is, it never goes up. It's nine cents now in 2026. It's nine cents 25 years from now in 9051. Did I say 9051? 9051. 2051. I'll be dead. But by 2051, you're still paying nine. Now think about this. You were going down this road, right? If I walk to you up to you and said, hey, Mr. Mrs. whatever, um, I want to give you this card, and you can buy gas at this gas station for$3 a gallon, which it is today, which we know it's just gone out because of the war, but typically it's about three dollars a gallon for the next 25 years. You won't be affected by the wars or anything. Inflation, nothing. 25 years from now, you'll be paying$3 a gallon. Would you take that card? Yeah. Of course you would. Why not? Right? Yeah. Absolutely. That's it. What this is. Right. You're locking in that rate. What's the catch?

SPEAKER_01 26:10

That's what everyone's gonna say. What's the catch? There's none. What do I have to pay for? How much is that card? None. You that is the card you get. This is the price of the per gallon that you're gonna be paying for 25 years. Yeah. So as utility rates increase, yours won't.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

Never.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Nine cents. 25 years.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Now, could you tell me, oh, I want even a lower payment, so can I get an escalator? Yeah. If you really wanted it, I wouldn't advise you to do that, but we could do that.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Go somewhere else.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

And we have the option of giving you an escalator, but I have dictated to my salespeople that we will not do that. Yeah. Unless you find me a good reason where we have to do it for some reason. And there, I guess there could be, I don't know what there would be, but we won't do it. It's not our practices.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

I am the king of telling people no here at Harmon. People come to me all the time. I want this, I want that, I want that. No, I'm not gonna do it. Go somewhere else. So your rate never increases. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

You're protected from uh rising utility costs and no money out of pocket.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

It's a pretty good program. It's a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

But well, yeah, I think if you have no tax liability and you're the everyday Joe and you just want to lower your bill because you're paying that 20 cents a watt kilowatt hour right now, and you just want to fix it at nine. Why wouldn't you do this? Yeah. I'll give you an example. I have a lease on this home that I'm in, our studio home. And I bought it, I got this lease in 2016. So I've had it for 10 years. Wow, yeah. And I locked in my rate, eight cents. And I've been paying eight cents a kilowatt hour for the last 10 years.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

I bet you're saving money.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

I'm saving a ton of money. There you go. But that's the same thing that it's come back around. And because we have this relationship, you get to take advantage of this. Now, when we see other companies out there selling this product because they have the light reach palmetto product, but they don't have this. And what we're typically seeing is 12 and a half cent kilowatt hour rate at a 1.99 escalator. That's what probably most people are gonna walk into your house with.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

That's what I was gonna ask you. Is this a Harman thing or is this an industry-wide thing? This is a Harmon thing. Harmon thing. Yeah. And I'm sure, just like everything, it's not gonna last long. I'm sure if you're one of those people, I'm gonna wait like three or four years, I wouldn't, you know, to get, and then I'll get solar. Well, that nine cent might be 10 cents or 11 cents.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

And when I say it's a Harman thing, it's our group that we're part of. Right, right. Right. So, but yeah, I mean, so more take note. And when some when someone's selling you solar and they come into your house and they offer you a lease, because most people are gonna offer you two things right now. They're gonna offer you a thick uh uh lease, uh, that's no money out of pocket lease, or they're gonna offer you a prepaid lease. A lot of the pre people have prepaid leases too. Right. Be careful of the pricing of both of those because they're gonna tell you they're giving you 25% off up front. They're just adding, they're just making the price bigger and telling you it's 25% off. Right. Trust me, call us. Right. See what our price is. See what our price is gonna be 25% less.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Yeah. So if you are getting a monthly lease, ask what is the price per kilowatt hour?

SPEAKER_02 28:58

Yes. If it's less than nine cents, then sure, great.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Go ahead, do it.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

And what's the ask later? Right. Right. If it's if it's greater than nine cents and greater than zero, that's worse than what we can give you. If it's less than nine cents and less than zero, and I'm willing to bet you a good amount of money right here, right now, that 99.9% of the time, it's gonna be greater on both those numbers.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

Yeah, I don't think you're gonna find less than that.

Guarantees Battery And Long Term Value

SPEAKER_02 29:20

I gotta give you a 0.01 because you never know. Yeah, but yeah, you're gonna find, I think you're gonna find what it works, what we're hearing in the market and what we're seeing when we go and talk to people, they're getting offered 12, 12 and a half cent, 1.99 escalator. That's pretty standard. That sucks compared to what we can do. Yeah, I mean, it shows a savings, it's gonna save money, but we can save it more. And plus that 12 and a half will then become 13, 13 and a half, 14. Next thing you know, when we're gonna still be sitting at nine. So it's gonna be why would you want to do that? Right? I wouldn't. Next slide. So why do homeowners love this lease, Ben? Because what?

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Because there's no upfront cost, obviously. That's what a lot of people think. The major pushback with solar is people say, Well, I don't have the money, I can't afford solar. Sure. Well, if you can't afford, I mean, if you can afford your current electric bill, then you can afford solar because it's less, you know.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Well, depending where you buy it from.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

It should be less. Yes. It should be reducing your utility bill. And the utility bill plus the solar lease added together is supposed to be less than what you're paying now. That's the idea. That's your savings.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

So you're fit no upfront cost, fixed electricity rate for 25 years, no tax liability required, protection against those rising rates, and peace of mind because with this lease, this is traditional lease, it has a production guarantee and a warranty, right? Right. This system that you will have on your house that'll be third party owned, will be warranted and guaranteed by that company for 25 years. If it's not working, they're gonna fix it.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

And what that means is they have a production guarantee on it. So it's saying, hey, your system is supposed to produce X amount per year, and we're gonna make sure that it does. If it doesn't, we'll take care of it.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

That's right. Yeah. And in Arizona, all these systems, all these leases come with a battery. So this is a Powerwall three included in this system. There you go. So you'll get a battery on top of your solar in this scenario. It's a we cannot sell this lease any other way. It's required to have a battery, which is not a bad thing. Yeah, it's actually a good thing. So, and then people when they see it, they're just like, man, this is a really good cost. They'll see that they're getting the power plus the bat plus a battery on top of it, and they're still saving a ton of money from what they're paying now. That's pretty good. And if you're saving good money year one, imagine what you're saving year five, year, 10, year 20. Right. It's because those rates they're gonna keep going up. They're not going down. Except for SRP.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

That going down significantly over a long period. That's true.

SPEAKER_02 31:48

Yeah, so simple way to think about it. We talked about the gas prices from 25 years abo. We go to the yeah, did I say years above. 25 years ago, gas prices we talked about. How good would it you know feel today to have those gas prices? I think we looked back 25 years and it was a dollar or something.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Yeah, a dollar, yeah. So imagine paying a dollar fifty for gas today.

How To Spot Bad Solar Deals

SPEAKER_02 32:07

That'd be awesome. That'd be awesome. That would be awesome, right? So that's that's option number three. So that's that's our three options, guys. I mean, and I gotta tell you, we're excited about this off these offerings. These are great offerings. Solar's back, baby. It's back bigger than ever. Yep. I mean, whatever your situation is, why aren't you talking to us? Yeah, you need to talk to us. You're gonna see the marketing that we've started to put out there, it it tags these three things. I mean, this is our big thing going forward is hey, whatever your situation, whatever you bucket you fit into, we've got your bucket. We've got a solution for you that makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Yeah. I know kind of our catchphrase that we've been saying a lot on here, and that you know, solar is not for everyone, but everyone should take a look. Yes. Well, that solar not for everyone window is getting smaller and smaller and smaller because now it's starting to look more and more like, well, solar could be almost for everyone. There might be a couple people or like, you know, your depends on the house. Roof is in a forest or something, then you know it doesn't work for you. But now it's starting to get to the point of like it's more and more people is looking more and more attractive.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

Yeah. This is we're excited. We're really excited. We're excited to put this together and come bring this to you guys because I know that you're patient with us. We've been talking about coming out with something, it's been a couple months. We had to get all this lined up first, and here we are. Here we are. Right. So this is this is awesome for us, as awesome for you. Um, tell your friends, tell your neighbors if they want to go solar. Now is the best time in the world to call Herman Solar because I'm telling you, these offerings, go watch this again. Go replay it, watch it, watch it, and just gonna go, man, that really does sound good. Yeah, yeah. It really is. It's as it's too good to be true. No, this is real. It's too good and it's true. And I would just say, now more than ever, be really careful of some other companies coming into your home because they're really trying to find ways to not only sell you solar, but to keep making good money that they were making.

SPEAKER_03 34:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:04

And they're realizing that it's a different market and a different time, and that that's gone.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:09

And they're fighting it. So you got to be really careful.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

Yeah. A lot of those companies probably, you know, they they made their dollar by lying to people and they got away with it. And even if they lied a little bit, there was still some savings and it was okay, just not as great. But now they're now it's getting to the point where like you can't lie to people.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

No.

New Lending Partner And Final CTAs

SPEAKER_01 34:27

And they're still going to try. Yep. So be where be be cautious of that.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

And one of the other things, we've we've created a partnership with another lender. Um, so the lending world has been very different. And we're we're gonna do a podcast with this lender and we're gonna talk about the lending world and how it's changed because it has changed dramatically. Um, a lot of the traditional lenders that have been out there with their high dealer fees and everything, it's gone. I mean, that not that they're gone, some of them are, but the ones that aren't gone yet, if they don't change, they won't survive because you can't survive in that world anymore. They they have these high dealer fees and all this stuff. It doesn't work anymore. You can't do that.

SPEAKER_03 35:05

Right.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

So we have a new partner that we're excited about that we'll bring on one of these podcasts here, real quick. Uh, where our our product right now, I want to say it's a 20-year loan, it's a 6.75 uh interest rate at a zero dealer fee. No fees, no dealer fees. It's pretty good. Yeah, it's really good. And then it'll fluctuate based on if your credit scores, if they'll go down to a 580, which to me is wow. If you have a 580, they'll lend you that the interest rate will go up a little bit. It doesn't go up a ton, but it does go up a few points. But it's still there's no fee, which is fantastic. So we've partnered with a new lender that we'll bring on the show here soon and we'll talk about that. Just makes even our offerings that much better. If there's good, like for instance, if you if you need to finance your product, we can now offer you a pretty darn good finance product as well. So, really good, good thing going on. Good things going on in solar right now. Good timing. It's perfect timing with how hot it's getting. So we're excited. We wanted to share this with you. We appreciate you guys taking the time to watch this episode. Look out for some new ones coming up. Like I said, we're gonna have one about lending and traditional lending and what's happened to it and what we have going forward. We're gonna talk about, you know, I've hey, I've gone solar. I think now what? What do I do next?

SPEAKER_03 36:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

So we're gonna have that podcast and a couple other ones that we're lining up as too. So we got some really exciting stuff lined up, but this to me, A plus. A plus. With the exception of this, my Seahawks winning the Super Bowl.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

Here we get we're gonna edit this out.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

Okay, plus and we're done. We're not supposed to talk about this, but there you go. A plus. So anyway, Ben, any parting words?

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Go Seahawks, right? No, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 36:38

Don't tell our ownership. They're Cardinal fans. We can't talk about this. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

We're gonna have to edit this out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

Uh anyway. Hey, thanks for joining us. We will see you again really soon. Take care. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

You've been listening to the Harman Solar podcast with Ben and Ralph, bringing clarity to the intersection of solar power and smart home ownership. If you found this episode helpful, don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. And also share the show with others navigating the solar journey. For questions and topic suggestions, call 800-281-3189 or visitpartmentstoler.com. You can also connect to the month's video. See the next episode.