SolarCity

The above user is correct. They will lie to you on how much you will save. The facts are with a $ 150 bill per month you will save nothing. Their charts are all smoke sand mirrors. I have lived this lie 6 months and to date I have not saved a dime, and I don’t expect I will on the winter months either.

DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!! Worst experience EVER. This has been my experience: Sales person Merris DeLane comes out and promises me that based on my average $ 150/​month bill, she could guarantee me that my bill for the next 20 years would be $ 55 per month. As she put it «The Solar that you sell back to the grid generates the difference». Great, we thought — sign us up. After signing up, we then started getting $ 110 bills for the equipments — and then we got an electricity bill from PG&E…it wasn’t much so we thought we were still saving money. UNTIL, on the year anniversay, we got a ridiculous $ 2600.00 bill. When I did the math with the PG&E person over the phone, it turned out that we were paying a penny extra per month PLUS the cost we were paying to rent the darn panels. Total rip off.
So, where did this $ 55/​month thing go? They have no recollection of that.
WASTE of TIME & ENERGY (bad pun intended)…PLEASE tell all your friends to avoid this company like the plague. They are liars & the business model is «let’s rip off the costumers by blatantly misleading them and then we make money from it!».
All you have to do is go to the
site and you will find TONS of complaints about them.
Here is a link to an article written that shows that a lot of people have had the same experience with them:
I hope someone comes up with a better solar solution for residential homes and that benefits the homeowner & the company. So, far, it’s SolarCity 100, Customer 0.
If I could have given them negative stars, I would have. One star is WAY too much for them.

Going solar is not necessarily a slam-​dunk no-​brainer decision. Sunlight might be free but solar systems are not, and PG&E at its lowest tier consumer rates (about 13 cents per kwh) cannot be beaten. It is only if you find yourself consuming enough electricity to be bumped into PG&E’s higher rates that you will find solar power being economically viable. I have a household full of wasteful people who leave their computers on 24 – 7 and stand in front of an open fridge for 10 minutes at a stretch and was consistently bumping up into Tier 2 and Tier 3 pricing so solar did make sense for me. I am guessing that your monthly electrical bills should show consumption of more than 500kwh per month in order for a solar system to be worth your consideration from a financial perspective.
Now then, if a solar system is right for you is SolarCity the company you should go with??? MAYBE.
I went with them and am satisfied, but I might have been able to get a system for less money if I had called an independent installer (Green Stock and West Coast Solar in the North Bay area have great Unilocal reviews). I suggest you call one major (like SolarCity) and one independent for quotes. I am no electrical engineer but I am pretty sure that the systems are not all generic so make sure you ask about system capacity, output guarantees and warranties in addition to pricing.
When deciding how large of a system to get DO NOT GET ONE WHICH IS TOO LARGE. You DO NOT want a system which will produce more power than you need since PG&E will only pay you about 4 cents per kwh when they do their annual true-​up statement to determine how much power you supplied to them or vice-​versa. My system was designed to meet about 80% of my annual needs, but so far in April and May the system has produced much more than we use and we have been banking kwh with PG&E for the dark winter months.
I purchased my system instead of just buying the power from SolarCity since SolarCity’s rates would have been the same or higher than PG&E’s rates. SolarCity was a bit deceptive when they marketed their rates versus PG&E’s because they calculated the PG&E rates using a simple average rather than a weighted average (weighted based on how many kwhs used at each rate). And remember, there is currently a federal income tax credit available equal to 30% of your system cost if you purchase the system. You only get the credit if you owe income taxes, so here is something else for you to consider.
Sounds complicated, huh? It is, but do your homework and you may very well find that solar makes sense for you. It brings us great joy to watch our meter run backwards during sunny days, and we have no complaints so far with our SolarCity system. Good luck, I hope you can join the Green Team!!!