Any experiences with renting a solar system, any pros, any cons?
Obviously this won’t be for everyone, people have different priorities and circumstances, but it looks like the companies who offer rental systems make a existance, so obviously there is a market.
I see some offer rent to own deals and others offer plain rental deals where you’ll never own the equipment, but I guess this is the same as leasing a car, there are those who still do it, who in fact choose to rather lease.
I have no experience with renting a solar system but allow me to comment.
This industry is in its infancy and is changing rapidly. Rentals of solar equipment will be a risky business.
However there is rented accommodation that has solar systems. I have recently been asked to assist with one of these. The inverter is an old dog (Axpert clone?) and the previous tenant removed the battery when he left. When asking whether anyone knows the system no one puts their hand up.
I hope this explains why solar isn’t mature enough yet for a rental business…
It all depends on the rental Co and how established they are.
Secondly it must obviously be in your favor, that you do indeed save on Eskom costs going forward. LS is a secondary benefit if there are batteries invovled.
For as you say, same as leasing a car, there are those who still do it, who in fact choose to rather lease.
Those who don’t need to be bothered with worrying about maintenance, settings.
Same as the people who lease cars, they don’t want to be bothered with services, maintenance.
Thing is, once installed, if the Co folds … who knows, the equipment may remain there.
Not easily “towed”.
A colleague of mine owns a lodge among a few other businesses. He is quite well off so could have easily had the money to buy his system, but he chose to rather rent it.
In passing he told me the other day his reasoning was for cash flow and it also helps quite a bit with his monthly VAT.
The topic came up because he was in the process to double his battery capacity which cost him over R300k which he bought outright, but his original system is on rent to own.
I have a friend who tried to go this route and asked me for assistance and my view.
Told him it only make sense if the rental is at least equal to your monthly electricity bill and preferable less. But in a perfect word this seldom happens without reducing your daily loads by making changes.
The change in behaviour is required because it is only with serious changes that you get a zero electricity bill.
If you can do that (without still having a R500 - R1000 additional electricity bill), then go for it. Then you can rent a smaller system as well and it will become yours. You have to accumulate data for a while also to make sure you size the system right.
But the criteria involved is like any credit lending assessment process for affordability. He didn’t qualify because the figures showed that he does not have enough disposable income left (even IF the system could reduce his consumption close to zero.
Yesterday I came across a Stage Zero article on MyBB. Looks like it is a company who offer system rental on a month to month basis and they emphasize guaranteed savings or you can cancel with no penalties.
Just for interest I tried their online quoting tool and they gave me 2 options based on my location, R7000 electricity bill, 3 phase direct Eskom customer post paid. They don’t actually ask for your usage, but just for reference I use around 1600 kWh pm.
For R2900 pm, a 15 kW inverter, 15 kWh battery and 8.8 kWp solar.
Or for R3300 pm, a 18 kW inverter, 20 kWh battery and 8.8 kWp solar.
This seams very cheap, so the first questions which comes to mind is where is the catch and how do they make their money?
So they install - then you cancel after 2 months… What then… 
The fine print must be heavy and deep!
I recon as with many of these companies they have a stiff penalty for decommissioning the system.
A neighbour of mine is renting his system, I can’t even remember from which company. After his 36 month contract if he does not want to continue and they have to come fetch it, it will cost him something like R25k or R30k.
I can tell you that a friend of mine, who is a director at one of the big property companies, went solar, but decided to rent rather than buy. He didn’t think he’d recover the capital when he sold.
That family have now put in solar for their mom who lives in a retirement village. Also rental, from the same company.
The renters monitor the systems and say they manage them for you to ensure optimal operation. Sometimes this means that they call and you and ask you to go to the inverter and press such-and-such button.
Said friend is usually out at work or playing golf (sometimes both) so his wife is the contact number for the rental company.
The other day her phone rings. She answers and the conversation went pretty much like this (names altered, but the general narrative is true).
Wife: Hello. This is Jane Bloggs.
Caller: Hello. This is Johnny from RentTheSun.com
Jane: How are you, Johnny?
Johnny: Errmmm… It’s about your inverter. Can I speak to a man please?
Jane: I’m going to pretend to not be offended by that. Now what can I do for you?
I will also tell you about something that happened to another friend who went for rental solar because she didn’t have the cash to buy a system. She made all the arrangements and they said “all good. Our installer will come on Tuesday”.|
Which he did. And he didn’t ask her where she wanted anything or show her the devices so that she had a chance to say “oh I don’t want that big lump in my front room”. They just started drilling right next to the DB where it suited them to install. Now the DB is in the kitchen. In her household the kitchen is large and doubles up as a dining room, so socially it’s quite important.
She was already unhappy when she saw them drilling. She even less happy when she saw the inverter and batteries.
So she asked them very nicely if they would install in the garage. They said, well OK, but only if we’re getting an adequate signal from your wi-fi.
So if you want to rent. Try to get some idea of the size and appearance of the hardware, and then think about where you don’t want it to be.
Okay, so here is my experience with renting (not being a renter of a system).
There are quite a few options to choose from, which is not a bad thing, but here are the con’s:
What I do like about rental is it does give those with limited options some options. But you have to be sure the contract covers performance guarantee and others. If the system does not perform as expected it should be taken from the monthly rental.
Ultimately, do your Due diligence. Just because Nedbank, Investec, Standard bank or whoever funds them doesn’t mean that they do a great job at it or are even technically compliant.
I wonder how this fits in with the push for registration from Eskom and the municipalities. The property is mine, so the registration has to be in my name - or so it seems to me.
So if I get moved onto another tariff with extra fees per month, and there’s a two way meter required, is this all for my account?
What then happens if I take advantage of the two-way meter and start pushing back onto the grid. I don’t know, but I’ve been told, that most rental companies take at least a cut of the credits generated for reselling. They can see from your inverter how much you fed in, and they can easily apply the tariffs and know what credit is due to you.
All of this may suit some folks. I think the key advice has already been given by @Rautenk : Read the proposal very carefully and know what you are getting in to.
I used to work in the healthcare industry. I used to get home just in time for the early evening business news. One day the wife says to me “hurry up! you have to hear this!”
Now what had happened is that a few months previously a badly administered medical aid had gone belly up and left it’s members, who diligently paid in for years, liable for big hospital bills. Government was concerned and so enacted legislation compelling these funds to have certain reserves in cash so that the members would have some cover if the fund collapsed.
So, on this evening I had to chuckle when I heard the CEO of a big medical aid getting a grilling from the then Minister of Health.
Minister: The act lays down a formula for calculating the cash reserve. You don’t have that amount in cash. You must have it so that your members are confident about being covered.
CEO: But we DO have that. I’ve shown that to you.
Minister: You might call that “cash”, but I don’t. I call that a promisary note from an insurance company that you own 100% of.
So people play games with words (and so we have to put strict legal definitions around words that should be self-explanatory and easily understood).
About two weeks later the wife says again “hurry up! You want to hear this!”
This time it is my then CEO getting it from the CEO of a medical aid.
Provider CEO: We all agreed that we providers would share our financials with the funders, including discounts whether on or off the invoice. We have stood by that.
Funder CEO: But we have established, because we suspected it from your year end figures, that you must be getting some further discounts that you are not telling us about. Otherwise your year end statements are not true and the JSE will not be happy about that. Oh… and by the way we have in our possession this document - I’ve sent you a copy - which backs up our assertions.
Provider CEO: Oh THAT. Yes, that document is real, we don’t contest that, and it’s 100% accurate as far as the numbers go. But you see, we don’t call that a DISCOUNT. If it were a discount we’d have had to include it in the figures we gave you. But no, we say that’s a REBATE, and our agreement says nothing about having to declare rebates.
More playing around with words.
So when this company says “no penalties” I would be that they mean “oh yes. It will cost you about R30K to have the system removed. But that’s not a PENALTY, that’s a DECOMMISSIONING FEE.”
Hi Nichus.
Please read your contracts well. We posed as potential customers and took the process right up to signing phase. We got the contracts in for all the different size options and made calculations based on the price of hardware at the time. Most contracts is for a 3 year period after which you can purchase the system. If you cant afford it, you have to rent for another 3 years and then buy it off.
If you purchase after year 3, you will end up paying double what you would have if you had the system installed for yourself. After year 6 you would have payed about 350% of the initial hardware cost.
It remains an option, but just keep this in mind.
Sounds much like the deal my one neighbour have, I asked him yesterday and he is with Versofy, if I remember he is about 18 months in now.
I won’t say I’m really interested in going this rroute because of all the pitfalls, but I’m exploring my options.