Well the day has come for solar panel leasing and the greater DC / MD area is about to see its options greatly expand with this measure.

As we previously reported this past week in the “State of Solar in Washington DC“ there are some concerns that the Districts solar subsidy program is about to see some real financial restructuring in its deployment of grants to residents, the same day we learn of Rockville’s Clean Currents Solar acquisition by Solar City a CA based solar installation & leasing firm.

Now how does a solar lease exactly work you might be wondering? Solar City has a video short explaining the effort, however essentially it represents just a different utility company in one way.  Presumably your panels are sized according to your yearly average usage as well as considering the size of your home and sizing a system based upon those measures.  Now your home can never be completely off the grid as it wouldn’t make complete sense as you would have trouble selling it here otherwise.  So you are still connected to your utility ( PEPCO ) however the vast majority of your power could be supplied via the solar panels and subsequently the lease comes close to reflecting what your utility bill would be at that time of the year.

I recall 8 years ago when moving to Washington and having this exact conversation with Scott Sklar of the Stela Group, “is it not time we have a solar lease option for business and residential consumers” well it was a bit early at that time as there wasn’t a great variety of sources then for creating the funding mechanism for solar leases.  It now appears that Solar City has been able to effectively organize and streamline the entire process so that the $Zero Down  and your monthly lease payment make it a real option for our entire region.

I am a big fan of the solar co-op’s that have organized our entire city around this effort the past few years, educating and moving it to the attention of our City Counsel so that our District Government realizes that the DDOE solar subsidy program was a success in that it has sparked an overall interest on the consumer side as well as creating a market for a number of solar installation firms in our region.

Solar City appears to be ramping up their efforts along with Clean Currents local market knowledge to start rolling the program out this Spring.  I personally look fwd to seeing this as a viable market force as there is no free ride when it comes to supplying energy!

Additional articles from this past week

NPR WAMU

Washington Post California solar company acquires Maryland foothold

Michael Kiefer
Green DC Realty Team
Phoenix Real Estate Solutions
Realtors DC/MD/VA
www.greenDCrealty.com
c-240.481.5041
o-301.526.5212