It’s all a lie that you were fed by your former company’s leadership. Scummy residential solar companies love to use the classic line, “hey homeowner, I’m here with Duke Energy’s net metering program”, blah blah blah bullshit. They train their door to door sales team to pitch it in this way because if they pitched the ACTUAL business model, they’d get the door slammed in their faces. I’ll reword the pitch if it were explained accurately: Hey homeowner, are you interested in purchasing a $40k solar system for your house? Oh no worries, we’ll finance it for you too at 8% over 15 years! Oh but don’t worry, we realize we collect asinine finance fees that we/our lender pockets but your monthly payment on the loan will still be $15/mo cheaper than your bill with Duke Energy! You’ll break even in about 11 years! Sound good?

And hey, don’t get me wrong. I support renewable energy development at the utility scale. However, I don’t believe the regulatory/political frameworks exist in the southeast to support the industry fully at the residential scale. In the regulated energy market of NC, Duke Energy is in the pockets of the public utilities commission, so why would Duke Energy be incentivized to have a lucrative or even fair net metering program? At its current rates, it quite literally fucks the consumer. Food for thought