The “demand charges” microbet and I mentioned are also becoming more common, or at least are being discussed. These are normal for industrial consumers, but have been rare (or nonexistant) for residential consumers. These charges measure the peak amount of electricity you use and then add a charge to your bill for that – it reflects the cost of system upkeep. If you use 10x the power of the next largest consumer, your share of grid upkeep is higher.
But is is 10x higher? Probably not, and hence comes the complicated rate proceedings.
Demand charges are a huge issue in the electric vehicle transition, because high-capacity (fast) chargers draw a ton of juice for short periods of time, and since they aren’t being utilized very much (yet) it means these stations can’t make a profit in many areas.
Anyway, this is a derail from home improvement AND I’m likely not even the most knowledgeable power guy on the site. But if anyone does have questions I’m happy to take a shot at it.
What adhesive should I use for kitchen counter side trim pieces that are loose and catch on my clothes when I walk by? I tried Gorilla Glue at a place I lived previously and that shit expanded out and looked horrible lmao.
I was just catching up on watching Last Week Tonight and the last show was about PACE. Is that whole program a predatory shit show (as it was described)? Did you ever have customers who used them? What was your experience? I hadn’t heard about them prior to watching, so I thought I read a bit about it, but I figured I’d just ask someone who knows first.
I sold a few PACE jobs and was a subcontractor for a lot of PACE deals. I don’t know that it’s the same everywhere and how predatory it is depends on who is selling it. It was like an 8% interest rate or something effectively. But, like one company might sell a job for $15k and another sell the same job for $10k, so if the $10k one has 8% financing and the $15k one has 3% financing, which is predatory? It’s hard to get loans for home improvement and PACE was heads and tails better than most home improvement loans and it was a lot easier to deal with than lease programs. But, it was nowhere near as good as getting a home loan - 2nd mortgage or whatever.
It’s been probably 5 years or more since I’ve done one though. I’ve been all cash for a while. If someone wants/needs financing, they have to get it themselves.
So, predatory shit show? not really. But are they good ways to finance home improvement? Not really.
Nope. What was the major problem with them? Fees? Interest rate? Or that they are hard to just not pay back? (like signature loans, which lot of people just don’t pay)
Some people are deceptive when they sell them I’m sure, but the ones I dealt with were really good about making sure the homeowner understood everything. The HO had to go on the phone with the PACE company and get everything explained to them. That was also unlike a lot of home improvement loans.
You might find the whole piece of interest, so I linked below. I’m oversimplifying but here is how they explained it:
Contractor: Looks like you need some solar and a roof
Home Owner: Well, maybe, but I can’t afford it
Contractor: Good news, there is the awesome program that will basically loan you the money. But it’s better than that. It’s actually your house that borrows the money.
Home Owner: That’s awesome, sign me up.
Then they do a bunch of expensive renovations after which the home owner gets hit with a massive tax bill they can’t pay and can lose the whole house.
Everything that I witnessed involved the finance company actually explaining all of the fees and payments quite clearly. Some contractor may well have lied about things before they got on the phone. I never did. (obviously I think). I just said “You need to talk to the finance company.”
Contractor finding what kind of loan people can get and doing their best to use up every last cent has nothing to do with PACE. It happens with every kind of financing or with cash. It’s just whether or not the contractor is honest and fair or not. A lot aren’t. A lot of elderly are taken advantage of.
And there are a lot of bad solar companies. A lot of home improvement sales companies full of scoundrels who had sold windows and siding and all sorts of things that are often sold by scoundrels added solar to their menu.
So, this is the “lose your house part”. The costs of the loan are lower than typical construction finance and the terms are much longer because it is secured.
Once again, I’m oversimplifying here, but I think part of the point was that with a traditional bank loan, the bank actually does some due diligence to see if the borrower has the capacity to pay the loan.
With the PACE program that check is taken away (or severely attenuated). So, unscrupulous contractors set people up with PACE loans they can’t afford. The financing company doesn’t have the same incentives to protect against default so they approve the loans and (allegedly) aren’t as clear about the terms as you say.
So, the home owner takes the loan. Then they get fucked. Contractor blames finance company for not explaining terms well. Finance company blames company for making misrepresentations about how the loans work. Everyone is finger pointing while the home owner gets a massive tax bill.
I don’t know what the incentives are with the finance company and if they have the same incentives as the bank. I don’t know why they would be different. And, I think in both cases it tends towards not actually doing due diligence or caring if people really have the capacity to repay. See various housing crises.
As far as finance companies not explaining the tax bills? I dunno. I’m sure that varies. Maybe it varies by state and laws in CA force them to disclose things better than other states. Maybe they do explain it and a lot of people don’t pay attention? IME it was explained very well every time. They made all home owners (usually husband and wife) go through a lot and it was very clear that they were doing this because the explanation a contractor might have given might not be good. If I recall correctly they required that I NOT be on the phone with them for at least part of it.
I was the prime contractor on maybe 7 or 8 of these and a subcontractor on maybe 100 (very rough guess - I didn’t know what financing particular jobs used, just that it was something offered by the sales company). If something went terrible on one of the 7 or 8 I probably would have heard about it. I probably wouldn’t have heard about anything going wrong on a job where I was a sub.
It’s good to hear your perspective. Sometimes I feel like I don’t watch John Oliver as critically as I probably should, since I agree with most of what he says.
If you do have a spare 20 min to watch, I’d be interested if in your opinion of whether not he gave a fair presentation of the topic.
For the most part Obama was partly right for sure. If someone gets a decent deal, any job I ever sold, no one ever paid more per month (or per year or whatever they paid for PACE financing) than they would have paid for electricity. If they got a bad deal, then probably not.
So he’s saying in Florida finance companies aren’t required to explain everything. Not surprising that in CA they would be required and FL they wouldn’t be.
A lot of this has nothing to do with PACE. Old person sold something they don’t need. “Speedy approval”??? That’s a PACE thing? Is sales and advertising a PACE thing? Having signatures on a tablet is a scam?
