Rooftop solar's dark side

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

4.5 million households in the U.S. have solar panels on their homes. Most of those customers are happy with it - their electricity bills have just about disappeared, and it's great for the planet. But thousands and thousands of people are really disappointed with what they've been sold. Their panels are more expensive than they should be, and they say it is hard to get someone to come fix them when they break.

It turns out this sometimes crummy customer experience is no accident. It ties back to how big, national solar companies built their businesses in the first place. To entice people to install expensive solar panels, companies developed new financing models which cut upfront costs for customers. And they deployed lots and lots of salespeople to grow their businesses. But in the drive to get more households installing solar panels, consumer costs went up and the focus seemed to shift away from making sure those panels actually worked. All of this left some consumers feeling like they've been sold a lie.

On today's episode, we look into how the residential solar business model has turned some people sour on solar. And we'll try to figure out where the industry could go from here.

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Transcript

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1:00.0	In 2012, Christine and John Scallera moved from New Jersey to Florida because of John's job. That move, still a little bit of a sore subject for them.
1:04.0	I came down kicking and screaming, didn't want to be here, and, yeah, so.
1:09.0	Best decision I ever made.
1:11.0	I haven't shoveled snow in 12 years.
1:15.0	Nope.
1:16.0	I might disagree.
1:18.0	Florida, of course a very sunny place, which at least partly explains how Christine and John came to sit down one day
1:25.8	with this young salesman named Justin.
1:28.3	This is about three years ago.
1:30.1	Justin told Christine and John that what they needed more than anything in this world were solar panels on top of their cute little ranch house.
	...

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