Now is the perfect time to install solar panels on your home because of the valuable tax breaks and credits available through the Inflation Reduction Act. However, these money-saving home energy upgrades are geared towards people who own their homes, not rent them.
This issue came up in a Reddit post to r/solar, where a tenant's landlord refused to install a solar system in an upscale, sunny California neighborhood.
The tenant explained that the home doesn't have good windows, so it gets cold between October and March at night. They would love to heat it at night with solar energy produced during the day, but the landlord refuses to install solar panels.
"Since we can't have a system installed on the roof, what alternatives are there?" the tenant asked fellow Reddit users. "There's a backyard that gets sun about 6-8 hours a day and the front of the house (south-facing) about 10 hours per day in the winter."
Trying to find a solar workaround can be frustrating when you lack the support to live sustainably in your home. However, options are available to harness the power of solar without rooftop panels.
For example, there's the PowerStream Balcony Solar System, which plugs into an electrical outlet and is portable, so you can relocate it if you move in the future. Another option is joining a community solar program, where you subscribe to a local solar farm with no installation required and typically see a 5-15% savings in electricity bills.
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Solar energy enthusiasts weighed in on this topic on Reddit to share their ideas and opinions. Yet since this original post was made, innovators have been developing new technologies to make solar for renters a real possibility.
A Redditor asked, "I mean…is this really that unreasonable? If you're renting the whole house you likely pay the electric bill, so where's the benefit to the landlord?"
"This is the same reason why landlords elect for inefficient appliances when they come up for replacement," a Redditor commented. "They don't pay the gas and electric bill, so why would they care?"
"This is the classic misaligned incentives issue," one Redditor wrote in the comments. "Typically the tenant pays the utilities and the landlord doesn't care about efficiency/environmental concerns."
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