Renting Solar Panels - Companies and Home Owners

The idea of renting products that would otherwise require a large sum of up front capital has been around for a long time. Living in an apartment is probably the most common form of renting and it is widely accepted across the US and most of the world today. With the price of installing a complete solar system nearing $20,000 (or less depending on if you do some of it yourself) renting solar panels is an idea that we can expect to catch on in the coming years.

In one such example, a company called MMA Renewable Ventures acts as a middle man to provide Solar Panels nearly free of charge to large businesses. They help to coordinate the deals between solar panel companies, investors, and the organization that wants to go solar! In this way, the company just redirects their electricity bill to MMA and the extra profit is used to pay off the costs of renting the technology. Read the full article in Business Week

This business model is very similar to what Citizenre is planning to offer for residential home owners all across America in late 2008. Under their model, home owners will rent solar panels by paying the same amount of money they were used to paying for dirty energy. By renting REnU solar panels to residents, installing and maintaining them, and providing a monitoring system, Citizenre is empowering residents to go solar with very little up front investment. Learn more about Citizenre at http://jointhesolution.com/begin and check out the short video below that we found on YouTube showing a small model of a home using net metering with solar panels to spin the electricity meter backwards.