Thanks Marc. I understand how it works. What is surprising to me is that the vertical integration you speak of can be that good, to make this economical where all other projects are not. Especially when you add the cost of referral fees, sales associates etc.

You say one can buy a system for $30,000 and that’s true, but what amazes me is that CR must have a vastly lower price than that. After all, a $200/month electric bill for 25 years — the example you cite — only works out to $28,300 of today’s money, so it can’t justify $30K and definitely not $50K. (You indicated the customer saves $13,000 with CR, meaning a $15,300 cost, cutting the payment from $200/month to $108.

The national grid price is around 10.7 cents/kwh. You’re saying you sell it for 5.8 cents. How can you do this?

(All this is presuming a constant 7% interest rate, that might fluctuate of course.)

This leads me to suspect when you quoted $13,000 saving, you are quoting a future value or a near-meaningless “add up the payments” calculation — the sort of bad math I have been talking about. Is that the case? Even then it’s hard to figure.