The Citizenre solar rental program improved again!

October 18, 2007 By Reggie “Rasmataz” Rasmussen

 

Citizenre’s rental program has been modified again and now customers may save even more money while using clean renewable electricity. Citizenre is a company that has plans to manufacture, distribute and install complete solar systems on residential homes with no upfront charges. Customers will rent these systems from Citizenre instead of purchasing the systems. Once product is available, the customer would meet with a solar technician who would design a system to best fit the needs of the home. If the customer approves the design of the system, a small deposit of $500 to $1000 is collected which would be fully refundable at the end of the service contract. Service contracts are currently offered for 1,5 or 25 years and the rental fee is locked in to insure no rate increases throughout the service agreement. The customer becomes his or her own producer of electricity from the equipment that is rented from Citizenre.

The original business model of Citizenre was to charge the customer for all of the electricity that was produced. Systems were under designed based on past usage for each home to insure that customers were never charged for electricity that was never used. If the customer still used less electricity, adjustments would be made to the system at no charge to assure customers that they did not generate and pay for electricity that was not used. Since the rental rates were nearly the same as the savings from the utility company, system rentals, in most cases, pay for themselves. To assure no service interruptions, the customer is still connected to his or her current utility provider and any electricity used but not generated by the system would still come from the current utility provider.

However, the rental plan was not fully embraced by all utility companies. Having the rental fee tied to the actual production of the systems, too closely resembled a utility company. So Citizenre management went to work and came up with a solution. The rental fees will be tied to the nameplate capacity of the system. In easy terms, the nameplate capacity is the amount of electricity that the system is designed to produce. So if the system is designed to produce 500 KW of electricity, customers will be charged a rental fee based on 500 KW of electricity. If the system produces less electricity than intended, the customers will get a refund. Here is why the program becomes so much better for the customer. If the system produces more than intended, the customer gets to keep the excess electricity that was produced with no extra charges.

Since the rent of the system is paid from the utility savings in most cases and each system has no upfront cost, the customers is now in an even better position to save money and the environment.

Over 23,500 are on the waiting list for the Citizenre Renu solar program. The company is expected to roll product off the assembly line and begin installations in the middle of 2008. If you would like to inquire about the Renu program from Citizenre simply click here: Solar Panel Rental Program: Sign Up Now!

Filed under: Articles on Citizenre • FAQ & Definitions

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