"If they can, the basic value proposition is this: Say you have been
paying your utility, on average, $100 a month. The solar company
installs solar panels on your roof, maintains them, monitors them and
repairs them for the life of the lease. The output will reduce your
utility bill to roughly $20 a month, and you pay around $65 a month to
lease the equipment (and the power the equipment produces, along with
maintenance). You’re now paying $85 a month total, 15 percent less than
you were, the installer has a revenue stream that it can use for cash
flow or sell off to an investor and everybody is playing his part in
reducing the burning of fossil fuels.
“The most frequent question I get,” Kennedy says, “is: ‘What’s the
sting? Where’s the trap?’ ” Lyndon Rive says he still goes to dinner
parties, where people know all about SolarCity and what he does, and at
the end of his pitch about the solar lease, somebody will say: “So how
much does this cost again? What’s the payback period?”
“‘You haven’t heard me!”’ he shouted to me, over the telephone, spelling out his frustration with those kinds of questions. “You get cheaper electricity! Full stop!’"
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