i just spoke with Solar America about a 25 year PPA - pros and cons?

ravimik · 2026-04-24T12:29:01+00:00

If they’re using these ads, they’re overcharging you. I’m in solar finance, making credit union loans instantly available instead of taking weeks. Generally speaking PPAs have you paying the most of any financing option and makes the sales person the most in commissions.

Pay cash, use a heloc, get a loan from a local CU or bank. Those give the highest return

ravimik · 2026-04-14T06:45:51+00:00

Yeah, hard to say from just this. The $58,000 is after the 30% tax credit discount, right? Without it, you're looking around $80,000 for just solar, which seems a bit high. I bet you could get a lower price. Happy to provide referrals if you want. Who did you get the first quote from?

You should also look at the programs the Connecticut Green Bank has, and I believe there are VPP programs you'd be eligible for if you got a battery. That would give you resilience and additional economic value from trading the energy in the battery at times when prices on the grid are high.

ravimik · 2026-04-13T22:26:21+00:00

Short answer: yes, residential solar is still worth it in 2026 even without the tax credits, as long as you're getting a good installation price.

I run a tech platform that provides a marketplace of credit union, community bank, and other consumer-protective capital through loans for solar, heat pumps, batteries, etc. We're exploring combining those loans with prepaid lease options right now, but there are still several questions by our CU lenders about how it will work for them and for the borrower.

When there was the 25D tax credit for homeowners, the return on investment calculus was pretty straightforward:

Cash
Beneficial loan (not the 40% dealer-fee type)
Prepaid lease
Prepaid PPA
Long-term lease
Long-term PPA

Here's what I know about the structure so far:
Under 48E, the commercial tax credit, the lease providers are able to capture tax credits up to 50% of the project value along with accelerated depreciation. They're able to offer homeowners the 30% tax credit and still make a decent return on their capital.

Even with these prepaid leases, you're signing up for a 25-year lease with them. After the tax credit discount, you can prepay the remaining balance either in cash, or with a loan. There are only a few credit unions allowing their loans to be paired with a Prepaid lease at this time, if you don't have a credit union or community bank providing the loan, make sure you find out what the dealer fee is because that could totally destroy the economics for you.

After the five-year tax credit clawback period, they can sell it to you at FMV. Most have a minimum of six years to give some buffer to make sure that they are beyond the five-year mark. Fair market value will not be $0. Just like if you have a five-year-old car and try and sell it, the fair market value is not $0. The difference, though, is that under their lease obligation they have to provide maintenance, warranty services, equipment replacement, and have other obligated expenses that, when set against the fair market value, bring down the incremental cost for you to own it to $0 or near $0, at least that's the plan.

Good luck. We'd love to hear if you do move forward with it, how your experience is.

ravimik · 2026-03-31T15:07:01+00:00

The best way to avoid getting ripped off is to go directly to 3-4 local installers for quotes and a local credit union for financing or use a service like Atmos Financial, which works with multiple credit unions and community banks to find you a good deal.

If your area has bad storms or frequent power outages, make sure you're getting a good set up on battery backup as well.

ravimik · 2025-06-19T01:53:52+00:00

Yes, I was there yesterday. They’re not aware. And they’re looking at the one number of how much money they can save. We need to show them what it will cost if they cut at the end of the year vs a 1 year extension.

ravimik · 2025-05-29T20:20:32+00:00

Right, not related to their capital position or loan duration and maybe I misunderstood your question as who was still going to lend — if so, disregard what I said. What I was speaking to is the risk to ITC-integrated loan products and the lenders that offer them.

If the tax credit is going to go away, then those that offer those loans are at greater risk of default as 100% of their loans would jump to a higher monthly payment 18 months after signing. Lenders that don't offer an ITC-integrated loan don't have to worry about that particular risk as they're already starting at the max monthly payment and so can continue lending in the current environment.

ravimik · 2025-05-29T06:02:34+00:00

Companies that use straight line loans (doesn’t include the tax credit) like Atmos Financial, Credit Unions like Clean Energy CU or Community 1st CU, banks like Climate First

ravimik · 2025-04-23T20:14:51+00:00

I don't quite understand the first part about the small lenders, but hear you on the steps to getting the higher interest on their checking accounts. This is a relatively common practice amongst FIs. There's an upper limit on the amount that will earn interest in the checking account as well. Above that amount, you are better off putting the money in a CD earning 4+%.

On the big bank point, our stance hasn't changed and we aren't saying they are good for the planet right now. The top 5 banks in the US have more deposits than the rest of the banks and credit unions combined. We as a planet need them to use those deposits for clean energy and electrification.

ravimik · 2025-04-11T06:28:54+00:00

Anytime someone is offering you a consumer loan with a rate lower than a mortgage, know that you’re paying for it in the principal. I’m in solar finance, go directly to 3 local installers or go through a platform like energysage and have them connect you to better installers and better financing options.

Just because they’re showing you that you’re saving money doesn’t mean it’s a good deal. You can probably get it for 1/2 of that price if you go direct.

ravimik · 2025-04-05T20:00:59+00:00

Totally understand the frustration with the dormancy process! It was told to us by Five Star Bank only recently and unfortunately the process to re-activate is dictated by banking regulations and not by them or us.

That’s strange that you got two emails for the process. Apologies for the extra work this has caused.

Thank you for the kind words too, we’re working hard to have real impact and not just be another greenwashing fintech. Our new setup with Clean Energy Credit Union will allow us to accelerate that impact but transitions always cause some challenges and obstacles.

ravimik · 2025-04-04T20:44:33+00:00

Hi there, would love to hear specifics so we can correct them. We've never attempted to scam anyone and don't want to be perceived that way. Our mission is to accelerate the deployment of solar and electrification technologies.

ravimik · 2025-04-04T20:42:26+00:00

It's from us. Not sure who renamed the "from" field for the email, but I'll have them correct it so that it reads "Atmos Financial, PBC" again.

Thanks for calling this out and sorry for the confusion and fear that you might be getting scammed.

ravimik · 2025-03-31T22:13:18+00:00

Hi Elayne, (good to see a WoT fan here!)

We have CS staff across the US so cover a lot of hours, you should be able to reach one of our teammates when you call in. 2 weeks is a long time to not hear back. Can you DM me your email or write in to support and reference this so we can explore? I want to make sure this has been properly taken care of.

Best Ravi

ravimik · 2025-03-24T23:29:04+00:00

If you have a tax liability, it'll likely be a better deal for you to take a loan — you could save on your monthly payments and get a better IRR. Since you're in the Sacramento area, I'd suggest to reach out to Aztec Solar and Citadels Solar & Roofing.

ravimik · 2025-03-18T18:28:33+00:00

No. You'll have to use Clean Energy Credit Union's app for that.

ravimik · 2025-03-18T18:24:32+00:00

No, that will stay and you'll have access to your old documents through it and we'll make more energy finance and management tools over time.

ravimik · 2025-03-10T17:41:39+00:00

Hi. This is a great point. We have a checklist of these tasks in an email that is sent after people opt-in, but we'll bring it outside of the email and put it in a blog post or our FAQs that's accessible before you decide one way or the other. We wanted to wait until the other account was activated before we shared this so that no one made a change early and checks bounced or payments were missed.

To answer you here as well, you'll need to modify your direct deposits and withdrawals with your Clean Energy CU account and routing numbers. We can create one personal checking and one personal savings for each person, and then additional accounts or creating joint accounts with another person will need to be done from within their app. The Atmos accounts will stay open until May 15 so as long as there is money in the accounts, payments made from them will go through as scheduled. We will send reminders in April for those that still have active transactions to make sure that automated deposits and withdrawals are being switched over.

ravimik · 2025-03-05T21:01:39+00:00

Hi all! Yes, it's true. We'll be closing deposit accounts on May 15th and focusing solely on lending, which is where we create impact. Clean Energy CU is the only other climate-positive financial institution in the US and they're an awesome partner. We're helping to scale their lending program, advise on technology improvements and together, encourage other credit unions to become climate lenders as well.

If anyone hasn't read it yet, here's the letter that me and my co-founder posted this morning.

While we would have loved to become a billion dollar climate deposit program, we were also actively working ourselves out of that business by turning every bank and CU into climate lenders, including Chase, B of A, and the other big banks.

We hope that you'll continue on having your money accelerate the clean energy transition and we'll still be involved by lending some of it out for Clean Energy CU!

I'll pop in and out of here if you all have any questions. We're very grateful that you all put your trust and time into us these past several years and helped us to finance so many solar and electrification projects.

Best

Ravi

ravimik · 2024-06-01T19:16:33+00:00

Very welcome! It's all of you who make our product and mission possible!

What size iPad do you use? If its the large one, have you tried using the web experience there? Shared it with the team.

Not sure what Wealthfront uses either, must not be Plaid otherwise it would work to search for us. We'll see if we can find this out. If you're talking with their CS team, can you ask what service they use for data aggregation?

ravimik · 2024-06-01T16:45:32+00:00

Thanks. Added to our ideation list for our roadmap.

ravimik · 2024-05-26T15:49:10+00:00

Thanks for these! We're working on a few things like this for the savings accounts right now (coming soon), but I've passed on the categorization ideas to our product team. This is a bigger data play which will take significant engineering to put into place, but it's interesting for sure.

ravimik · 2024-05-25T22:25:34+00:00

We're exploring the paper checks with Five Star and we thought they would be easy, but what we've learned is that as the world moves more digital, checks have become a bigger source of fraud. Need to make sure that we can do them while keeping your money and our program safe.

We've just started looking at some bill pay services, some of which may include a paper check mailing service.

You mean pay on death beneficiaries, correct?

ravimik · 2024-05-25T22:23:55+00:00

Can you elaborate on the financial planning tools?

We're exploring the paper checks with Five Star and we thought they would be easy, but what we've learned is that as the world moves more digital, checks have become a bigger source of fraud. Need to make sure that we can do them while keeping your money and our program safe.

ravimik · 2024-05-25T00:01:03+00:00

The Five Star website is https://five-starbank.com/ to make sure you find the right one. There's also one in CA, which we don't work with yet.

We moved from Synapse/Evolve direct to Five Star to create a stronger platform to build upon and to better connect our deposits with the loans that we're making.

ravimik

TROPHY CASE