A lease is better if you save money upfront and you don’t plan on being at that home for a long time since you will have a lower initial out of pocket expense and won’t be responsible for replacement or maintenance.
We offer cash purchases, leases, and financed-to-own systems, so the advice I’ll give is the same we give to our customers. With the variety of $0 down financing available (unsecured loans, PACE financing, etc), leases/PPAs (power-purchase-agreements) are usually NOT the best savings for residential customers. Owning the system (through cash purchase or finance) allows you to take the 30% Investment Tax Credit offered at the Federal level until 12/31/2019. This gives you additional savings and provides a much better ROI. The only time we recommend a lease or PPA to a customer is when they don’t have the tax liability to absorb the dollar-for-dollar tax credit benefits. Any good solar analyst should be able to walk you through the options that can work for you (make sure you select a contractor who offers all financing options, not just lease).
Very few times does a lease make sense.
However, in cases where the homeowner does not have a tax liability or we work with a non-profit entity (church, golf course, charity) and the tax credit cannot be utilized, a lease makes a bit more sense.
We have an exclusive 10 year lease that allows for fast payback and maximizes the savings to the customer.
Any other scenario, a purchase is the best option. Plenty of financing options exist nowadays that a lease or PPA should be a thing of the past.
Leasing a system reduces the benefits of having a solar system but it also reduces the burden of ownership and upfront costs.
To further drive home the valid points made by others on this thread, this article dives deep into the decline of the lease model. Interesting that it’s taken until this year for solar ownership to leapfrog leasing.
Low monthly payments is what captures prospects at the end of the day.