A friend of mine is a Big Deal in the Sales Department at Powur, a company that pimps solar power. The way Tom explained it to me is that, the customer pays nothing except for maybe some trivial pieces of electrical equipment that may cost a few hundred or less. Powur installs the panels on the customer’s roof, and the company owns the electricity generated. The customer buys their electricity from Powur, supposedly at a greatly reduced cost. Thing is, Tom won’t give me real numbers without giving him an electric bill (so he can analyze the kilowatt hours used, the local utility’s rates, etc.). And I can’t give him one of my own bills, because he was remarkably straightforward with me (for a salesman) and told me that my southern exposure wouldn’t make solar feasible. *Aside: this is the first, and may be the last and only, time that a salesman has actually declined to sell me a product.
Now, I know that if you just buy solar panels off the shelf (so to speak), you own 100 percent of the power generated. Best-case scenario: your panels generate just enough electricity to power your home, and your electric bill is $0 (not counting service fees or whatever). Best-best-case scenario: your panels generate more power than you need, it goes into the grid, and you actually get paid by your electric company. Worst-case scenario: your panels don’t generate enough electricity this month, or you use more than your panels generated (because it’s winter and low sun, and you use more power to heat your home, or whatever), and you buy the rest from your power company.
With Powur, there is no local electric utility involved in the customer’s end of the transaction. Powur is the electric utility, and you buy from them. Again, I can’t get real numbers, so I’m going to use 60% savings as a starting point. That means that if I lived in Central Illinois (where they are expanding bigly) in a ~1100 square foot, well-insulated house with electric heat, my electric bill in the summer would be ~$150, in the winter ~$250 if I bought off the grid. With these savings, I’d be paying ~$60 in the summer, ~$100 in the winter.
So here’s the thing: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and all that. And I figured out the scam (OK, so maybe “scam” isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean): the customer actually is buying their solar panels from Powur. It’s disguised at the monthly electric bill. So if I contracted with them, I’d effectively be buying the panels at ~$80 per month for ~25 years (about how long the panels would be expected to last, or approximately $25k when all the dust is settled. That’s probably a good deal more than I would pay off the shelf.
HOWEVER, to pay off the shelf I would need to put money down and get financing, whereas with Powur I just sign on the dotted line, Bob’s your uncle, and within a few months I’m paying less for electricity and there’s no loan on which I can be late and/or default. The bank can’t repossess your solar panels, but your electric company can easily cut you off.
So with all of that out of the way: is this a scam, or even a not-very-good deal? Does anyone have any experiences with this company and/or with home solar generally?
ALSO: I’ve read that Powur is a MLM. That doesn’t appear to be true. My friend Tom stated that, yes, if I join as an Appointment Setter, he gets a referral bonus. Whatever salesperson I set the appointment with, Tom or otherwise, gets the lion’s share of the commission but I get a cut as well. But unlike the MLM model, this doesn’t bank on me pulling my friends or family into the scheme and selling product to them/convincing them to sell product. Nor does it require me to host parties or any of that shit. The job, from where I sit, appears to be no different from any other entry-level sales job that sells a legit product legitimately. In fact, don’t most sales operations funnel some percentage of junior salespeoples’ commissions to the senior salespeople who recruit/mentor them?