Investing in Solar PV Power Systems for Your Rental Properties
As a landlord, you’re always on the lookout for ways to make your rental property more appealing and profitable. Have you considered that solar panels are a way to do just that? Landlords and tenants alike benefit from this technology. Find out how, as well as what you need to do, to get started with solar power for rental properties.
How Solar Panels Benefit Landlords
Whether you live on-site or off, you can expect to benefit from installing photovoltaic solar panels. Here’s how you’ll see a return on your investment:
- Reduce your rental operating costs (if you pay the utilities yourself)
- Reduce your own electric bills (if you live on-site)
- Justify charging higher rent (if tenants pay their own utilities)
- Offset electricity costs in common areas
- Get money back from excess solar energy production through net metering
- Attract tenants who are interested in paying little to nothing on their electric bills
- Increase your property value
- Qualify for tax credits to help offset the investment of going solar
- Lower the carbon footprint of your building
How Solar Panels Benefit Renters
Any changes you make to your rental property shouldn’t just benefit you — they should also appeal to prospective renters to help you stand out and fill vacant properties faster. Here are the benefits you’ll want to share when listing your property for rent:
- Solar panels reduce or eliminate the tenant’s electric bills. This amounts to virtually free air conditioning all summer long for your renters!
- Solar panels reduce reliance on the power grid. If you install battery backup power along with the PV panels, your tenants will have power during a blackout.
How Does Solar Work with Rental Properties?
You have a few options for setting up your rental property with solar power:
- Install solar panels and connect them to a meter. If your building has one electric meter, connecting your solar panels is a straightforward process. If you have multiple electric meters for different units, you can direct the solar power toward one or all of the meters based on your needs.
- Enroll in a local solar farm. Also known as community solar, utility-scale solar farms allow anyone to support local, clean energy without installing solar panels on the roof. This could be a good alternative if an installer deems your building unsuitable for solar.
Understanding Your Solar Financing Options
You have several ways to fund your rental property’s solar panels. Here are some of the most common financing techniques:
- A cash purchase provides the greatest long-term savings, but the upfront cost can be a lot to manage all at once.
- Bank or lender financing lets you put as little as $0 down, with a fixed monthly rate to pay off the solar loan over a number of months.
- Leasing provides an easy entrance into the solar market, but this option results in smaller overall savings than a cash purchase or loan.
- A Power Purchase Agreement is when a developer arranges for the design, permitting, and installation of solar panels at no cost to the property owner. The developer then sells the power generated by the solar panels to the property owner at a low, fixed rate.
Contact Solera Energy for Rental Property Solar Panel Installation
Choosing the right company to engineer and install your rental property solar panels is just as important as deciding to go solar in the first place. Solera Energy was the first company to bring solar to Missouri and Northwest Arkansas. In the decade-plus that we’ve been doing business, we have installed more solar panels than all other companies in the region combined! That’s the experience you can trust.
Ready to learn more? Contact us today at (855) 650-7404 for a free consultation!
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