HELP - SolarCity vs. SunPower Quotes

[Naptown]

Bottom line is the Sunpower modules degrade less over time than almost any other brand.
If SC is quoting poly's count on them losing about 3% output in the first month and stabilize from there.
The SP's don't have that initial drop and seemingly are allowing a bit of room left over for perhaps a hot water system in the future.
Lease costs vs production are about as equal as you can get.
I would put my money on Sunpower, Better off financially, (As a Company), been around forever far superior equipment.
And the buy out clause allows you to purchase the system.

[bobfromnj]

SolarCity a poor choice

[QUOTE=
I would put my money on Sunpower, Better off financially, (As a Company)[/QUOTE]

Sorry about the length of this but the first article is about 6 months old and the second one faily recent why there stock is a poor choice. They also use inferior material and have been known for poor workmanship. Sunpower is your best bet.

Sounds like SolarCity is not a very financially stable company. This was on the Internet as reported by the NY Times.
Solar panel installer SolarCity Corp filed with U.S. regulators to raise up to $201 million in an initial public offering. (IPO)
The company's total revenue was $46.6 million in the three months ended June 30, compared with $13 million a year earlier. It said it had an accumulated deficit of $70.3 million as of June 30
In addition, SolarCity said it was notified this month that the Internal Revenue Service is conducting audits of two of its investment funds, including a review of the solar installations that applied for a popular government cash grant program.
"If ... the Internal Revenue Service determines that the valuations were incorrect and that our investment funds received U.S. Treasury grants in excess of the amounts to which they were entitled, we could be subject to tax liabilities, including interest and penalties, and we could be required to make indemnity payments to the fund investors," the company said in the SEC filing
The company is losing money: In 2011, the company had net losses of $73.7 million, up from $47 million in 2010


SOLARCITY: Bad Investment?

Based on the company’s road show, it appears that SolarCity’s leases are like alarm system leases. That is, you keep them forever. Even if you move.
This setup presents some natural problems. What if you move from a house you own to an apartment? The solar system can’t move with you. What if you die before your lease is up?
There’s very little chance that customers will actually stick around for the full 20 years. And since this is such a new offering, there’s no way to estimate the stickiness of customers. So unless you have faith in Wall Street being too conservative, chances are, SolarCity’s management underestimates this impact. So there will be much higher costs associated with contract cancellations.
These aren’t the only problems SolarCity faces when it comes to customers. It also must contend with credit risk.
I know everyone swears that utilities are the most recession-resistant and credit-irrelevant businesses in the world. After all, everyone pays to keep the lights on. But SolarCity isn’t a utility.
Remember, customers put no money down to have a solar power system installed. Afterwards, they’re still connected to the traditional power grid.
So what’s stopping them from stiffing SolarCity? Absolutely nothing. SolarCity might be able to remotely disable the system, but it can’t turn off a customer’s power completely.
Bottom line: SolarCity has no leverage to force customers to honor their contracts. And if customers stop paying, it means that the cash flows intended for institutional investors take a hit.
This is a bad debt problem just waiting to happen.
Investors don’t always behave rationally, so shares of SolarCity could certainly enjoy a post-IPO bounce. But it promises to be short-lived given all the risks threatening the company’s business model. So I’d add SolarCity to your list of potential stocks to sell short, not buy

[bonaire]

They're (IRS) going after SC now but I wonder why they let Moody's and others let hundreds of billions of AAA-rated mortgage backed securities tank the markets and economy back in late 2007. Could have used their scruitiny back then

Both are a big risk and rely heavily on the existing federal tax credits and other incentive programs. We can't assume they will be around for 20 years. If SC should fail, thereis a good chance that the homeowner makes out well as they stop collecting their lease payments. Perhaps they have some underwriting company out there that would continue to service the leases until they runout. They would probably then just leave the aging equipment on the house at the end. Big issue is would they support inverter replacement during the active lease period.

[russ]

Leave it all on the roof? Those panels are an asset - some third party will buy them for peanuts and collect them.

[gabrielrat]

Here is what SC said when I have the bad news...

Just a heads up since I assume you are looking into Sunpower and their local installer: We provide a Best Value Guarantee which means if you send me Sunpowers quote I will beat it. If the savings were equal, I would be shocked if you sided with Sunpower's agreement and a less qualified installer over our holistic solution.

I would wager a great deal that the installer (“Elite” or not) will be out of business in Los Angeles once the solar tax credit expires in 2016 and the rebate has dropped. Solar City has a low enough cost of capital to withstand the removal of both the tax credit and all rebates. Finally, Sunpower is actually reducing their size (stock price has dropped to $7.70) while we are growing rapidly and buoyed by two other rapidly growing companies (Tesla and Space X). Do not be wooed by fancy panels, there is so much more to a 20 year partnership.

Just my two cents...

[Naptown]

The Sunpower warranty is backed by Sunpower not the local installer. If the installer is out of business they will continue to warrant the install and equipment.
Sunpower is also backed and the majority owned by one of the largest companies in the world. It escapes me at the moment but it is a large French oil company that owns the major share of them.

[russ]

We provide a Best Value Guarantee which means if you send me Sunpowers quote I will beat it. If the savings were equal, I would be shocked if you sided with Sunpower's agreement and a less qualified installer over our holistic solution.

How do you say "high pressure"salesman? One time 40 plus years back I took Kirby (vacuum cleaners) sales course -more or less by accident as I needed a job and they wouldn't say what it was about over the phone. They taught every trick in the book to put the customer on the spot and this sounds like that bunch. Never made one demonstration - I was ashamed of their BS line.

[Tezz]

If SC is quoting poly's count on them losing about 3% output in the first month and stabilize from there.

Why are you spreading FUD about SolarCity? Here is the quote from this forum: 10,213 kWh is guaranteed in year 1, and this level gets reduced by 0.5% annually, all the way down to 9,285 kWh in year 20

I bet SunPower would have a hard time to match 0.5% reduction of guaranteed production over 20 years.

[KRenn]

Sunpower is one of the oldest solar companies in existence. They are not under investigation from the justice department and their system will produce about 1000KWH more per year than the Solar City.
Seems like all things are pretty equal price wise I would go with the Sunpower lease as they are more likely to be around to replace the inverter when it fails.
No brainer IMHO

I was trying not to comment on this thread for fear of incurring your wrath but you said essentially everything I wanted to.

[KRenn]

The Sunpower warranty is backed by Sunpower not the local installer. If the installer is out of business they will continue to warrant the install and equipment.
Sunpower is also backed and the majority owned by one of the largest companies in the world. It escapes me at the moment but it is a large French oil company that owns the major share of them.

Total SA. They basically gave SunPower a billion dollar credit line to play with and told them to have fun.

[KRenn]

Both SC and SP are guaranteeing output or will compensate. Also fully insured. SC is maxing my roof with their 19 panels, so it seems that that is the best they can do.

What I am hearing this all come down to is which company I am more comfortable with SC or SP. I don't mind spending the extra $ if SP Panels are FAR superior and will produce more.

I asked to see an actual lease for SP, which I dont have in my hands yet, but my local "Elite Dealer" said they go through Citibank.

For what its worth, SunPower makes the best panels on the market, the $10 difference for a bigger system is well worth it for the added amount of power, especially considering that SunPower has been around since the 80s and SolarCity has been around since about...2007. SolarCity is also getting hardcore audited for some accounting discrepancies on how they reported the price of these systems to the Treasury.

As far as the whole "Elite Dealer" thing goes, that is mostly advertising nonsense, in fact if you think you might go with SunPower, get at least one more quote from another SunPower dealer, the pricing can vary more than you may think.


The one thing I haven't seen from you is a list of the equipment. Obviously SunPower is providing their modules, and hopefully they are providing you with Power One inverters.


What equipment is SolarCity providing? A lot of the time, they don't really like to bring that up and seem to regard solar panels as a commodity, like one panel and one inverter is simply interchangeable for another, which isn't accurate at all.

[Tezz]

Googled SunPower degradation, specifically E20. They could not match SolarCity guarantee of panels output.

Plus that is SunPower panels guarantee, installers most likely will play safe and lower those numbers even more.

[KRenn]

Just a heads up since I assume you are looking into Sunpower and their local installer: We provide a Best Value Guarantee which means if you send me Sunpowers quote I will beat it. If the savings were equal, I would be shocked if you sided with Sunpower's agreement and a less qualified installer over our holistic solution.

I would wager a great deal that the installer (“Elite” or not) will be out of business in Los Angeles once the solar tax credit expires in 2016 and the rebate has dropped. Solar City has a low enough cost of capital to withstand the removal of both the tax credit and all rebates. Finally, Sunpower is actually reducing their size (stock price has dropped to $7.70) while we are growing rapidly and buoyed by two other rapidly growing companies (Tesla and Space X).
Just my two cents...

What a load of $#%^^!

SolarCity is a financing company started by venture capitalists, SunPower is a solar manufacturer started by Stanford scientists. SolarCity's entire business model is dependent on leasing, leasing is going away, and once its gone, so will the majority of their business. SunPower on the other hand manufactures panels, the leasing part is a side business for them.

Do not be wooed by fancy panels, there is so much more to a 20 year partnership.

There's something pretty amusing about a company with a 6 year history talking about a 20 year partnership.

[KRenn]

Why are you spreading FUD about SolarCity? Here is the quote from this forum: 10,213 kWh is guaranteed in year 1, and this level gets reduced by 0.5% annually, all the way down to 9,285 kWh in year 20

I bet SunPower would have a hard time to match 0.5% reduction of guaranteed production over 20 years.

1. Production Guarantee's are a joke, most companies go with a "safe" number that is low enough that they don't have to worry about providing compensation to the homeowner at any time during the lease. The production numbers are cumulative, meaning if you outproduce in the first six or seven years and then production dips, you will not be getting compensated until the overall output numbers have gone below the guaranteed output numbers for the contract as a whole, not in one given year.

2. What NapTown was referring to was the initial light based degradation that you get with most solar panels due to the production process. SunPower panels do not suffer from this initial decrease of about 2-3% once the panels are actually put up on the roof.

3. With SunPower, you generally know the level of the equipment you're getting. SolarCity has gone out and used brands like EverGreen , which are now out of business and there is no warranty for, meaning you're basically screwed if SC goes under.




I would compare the equipment, apples to apples looking at power tolerance, efficiency, functionality in various weather conditions, looking at the efficiency of the inverter, like I said before, so far I haven't seen what equipment SolarCity is using in their quote. From what I've heard, they often don't even list the equipment in the quote, lease or purchase, I want to know what the heck is being used specifically and I want that written into the contract.

[Naptown]

I was trying not to comment on this thread for fear of incurring your wrath but you said essentially everything I wanted to.

Actually now a Sunpower dealer. Their lease products are very competitive compared to Solar City, Sungevity etc.
Although their equipment costs me almost as much as what I can retail other systems for it is becoming evident that they stand behind both their product and dealers. Got involved mostly because of their lease products (Not yet available in Maryland or DC as of yet) which are outstanding and after being burned by NRG.

If you can't beat em join em