The Solar Sales Pitch: What They Leave Out

The person on the porch can be licensed, polite, and still selling you a story the contract does not support. This page is that story. Outright fraud, the kind the Florida Attorney General has sued over, is on the scams page. When the honest answer is not to buy at all, that is the skip-solar page. The math, when the house actually fits, is the worth-it page.

The payment is not the price

The pitch opens with a monthly number next to your current power bill. That comparison is the product. It hides three things.

The cash price is what the system costs if you write a check. The amount financed is what the loan is actually for. On installer-arranged solar loans those two numbers often do not match. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau looked at this and found dealer fees, sometimes called a program fee or a finance fee, commonly around 10 to 30 percent of the cash price, and sometimes more than half. A system that is $30,000 in cash can show up as a $39,000 loan. The low interest rate on the brochure is applied to the bigger number. The fee is often left out of the annual percentage rate (APR), which is the figure that is supposed to show what the credit costs.

Ask for both numbers before anyone talks about the payment. If the financed amount is higher, the difference is the fee. A company that will not write the cash price down is not ready for a signature. The financing page is the rest of that comparison, including why a prepaid lease can take a large check and still leave the company as the owner.

The credit they are still quoting

For years the pitch subtracted 30 percent for the federal residential credit, Section 25D, and then showed you a payback on the smaller number. That credit ended for a system you buy and place in service after December 31, 2025. A 2026 proposal that still nets it out is using last year’s law. It is not a rounding error. On a $25,000 system it is the difference between a story and the invoice.

A lease company may still be able to use a different business credit. That credit is theirs. It is not a discount they are required to give you, and it does not make you the owner. A “prepaid lease” is the version that feels like a purchase because you paid up front. Read who owns the equipment at the end of the term, and what it costs to buy it then. If the answer is “you sort of own it,” you do not.

Florida’s property-tax exclusion and the sales-tax exemption on qualifying equipment are still real. They are not a weekend special, and they are not a check. The incentives page is what is left. Anyone who says a state or utility rebate expires tonight should name the program, the agency, and the deadline on paper. If they cannot, the deadline is the appointment.

Your bill does not go to zero

“Eliminate your electric bill” is the sentence to stop on. You will still pay the utility to be connected. Nighttime power, a cloudy week, and the air conditioner still exist. Extra daytime power is not automatically worth the full retail rate.

On Duke Energy Florida and Florida Power & Light (FPL), kilowatt-hours you send out can offset power you take later in the year. What is left at year-end is paid at a cheap avoided-cost rate, not at the rate you pay. FPL also does not want a residential system expected to make more than 115 percent of your annual use. Building past your bill so the chart looks dramatic means you paid for kilowatt-hours the utility will not buy at a good price.

Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) is not that deal. Newer connections do not get the old retail export price. A pitch that pastes a Duke offset onto an Orlando bill is the thing they are not telling you. The utility page is the split. If they did not ask which company is on your bill before they showed the savings, the savings are a template.

The chart is a mood, not a measurement

A proposal loves a 25-year stack of green bars. Look at the assumptions, not the color.

Production for a south-facing Central Florida roof is commonly modeled around 1,500 kilowatt-hours a year for each kilowatt of panels. That figure already includes ordinary afternoon storms. A quote far above it, with no shade report, is assuming a roof you may not have. Trees, a north plane, and a hip cut into small faces belong in the number. The clouds page is why a dark July does not mean the chart was a lie, and why a live oak is not a cloud.

The other lever is the future price of electricity. A chart that grows your savings 4 or 5 percent every year for a quarter century will beat a chart that does not. Rates have risen. They have also jumped around with fuel and storms. A model can assume a rise. It should not hide the assumption in a footnote you never see. Ask what rate they started with, and what percent they added each year. Then look at last year’s bill, not at year 25.

The chart also tends to omit the costs that show up later. A string inverter often needs replacing somewhere in the 10-to-15-year range. Taking the array off for a reroof is its own invoice. A battery, if they added one to make the monthly payment look like “whole home backup,” has its own replacement clock. None of those bars are usually on the slide. The inverter page and the roof page are the missing rows.

They sized it for the contract

A bigger system is a bigger contract. The useful size is the one that matches how this house uses power, on this utility, on this roof. The pitch size is often the largest the utility will allow, or the largest the roof will hold, because the payment can be stretched to look like your current bill.

If you are gone all afternoon, a large grid-tied array without a battery exports the best hours of production. On a weak export rate that is you buying equipment to sell power cheaply. If the air conditioner is the bill, the panels help when they run at the same time as the compressor, and they do less for a house that is empty and set to 78 degrees until 6. Ask them to show your last twelve months of use, not a statewide average house.

The same habit shows up in the equipment. A panel brand you have never heard of is not automatically worse. A refusal to put the model numbers, the inverter type, and the warranty years on the quote is. “Tier one” is a finance phrase, not a promise that this pallet is the one in the photo. Microinverters versus a string inverter changes shade and changes the replacement you will buy later. That choice is the inverter page, not a line the closer is in a hurry to skip.

Backup, the roof, and the clock

Three sentences do a lot of work in these appointments.

“It runs the house if the grid goes down.” A normal grid-tied system shuts off in an outage. It has to. Sun on the roof and dark rooms is the ordinary hurricane result. A battery can cover some loads for a limited time. It will not run central air for days. If backup is why you let them in, make them point at the equipment that does it, and the price of that equipment with the panels taken out. The battery page is the distinction. A pitch that folds a battery into one payment so you cannot see its cost is hiding the answer.

“The roof is fine, we looked from the street.” The mount has to hit rafters, the flashing has to be a product, and the roof has to outlast the array or you will pay to remove the system. Tile breaks. Underlayment fails while the tile still looks good. If they did not get on the roof, or they will not say what happens when the roof is replaced, the proposal is incomplete. Insurance belongs in the same conversation. Call your agent before you sign, not after a hail claim. The insurance page is the deductible they did not put on the chart.

“The price is only good today.” A real equipment price does not evaporate at midnight. The federal credit they may be rushing you toward is already gone for a system you would own. Florida’s solar-rights law and the tax exclusions are not expiring this weekend. Same-day pressure is a sales tactic. If the visit was at your house or a booth, not at their office, you generally have three business days to cancel, and they have to give you the form. The laws page is that window. Use it. A price that cannot survive a Thursday is not a price.

What they should leave on the table

Do not sign from the tablet. Ask for a proposal you can read after they leave. It should have all of this, in writing:

• Cash price, amount financed, interest rate, term, and any dealer fee, as separate lines.
• Who owns the system on day one, and who owns it at the end of the term.
• Your utility by name, the yearly production in kilowatt-hours, the roof direction they used, and whether shade was modeled.
• Panel and inverter model numbers, and the workmanship warranty in years.
• What the house can and cannot run during an outage.
• What they charge, today, to remove and reinstall the array for a reroof.
• A statement that no federal residential credit was subtracted unless you are somehow still inside the old law, which a 2026 install is not.

Then get a second proposal from a different company and compare those lines, not the monthly payment. The installer guide is how to check the license before the second visit. One angry review is noise. A stack of unfinished roofs is a pattern.

If the verbal savings, the tax credit, or a claim that they work for the utility does not appear in the contract, it does not exist. That gap is where a pushy appointment becomes the thing the Attorney General wrote about. The consumer guide is “Scams at a Glance: The Dark Side of Solar,” and the complaint line is 1-866-966-7226. Most pitches never get there. They just leave out the cash price. That is enough reason to wait.

This page is general information, not legal advice about a contract you already signed. The paper controls. The pitch does not.