The offer is simple. A company installs solar on your roof, keeps the panels and the income from them, and you get cheaper electricity, or a small rent, or both. No capital outlay, no maintenance, no hassle. It is sometimes a good deal. It is always a long one, and the document that governs it is a lease, or something that behaves like one, and it deserves to be read as carefully as the lease on a building.
What is really being agreed
Whatever the brochure calls it, the agreement usually does five things. It gives the company the right to use your roof for a fixed term, often twenty to twenty-five years. It gives them rights of access for maintenance and repair. It sets what you pay for the electricity, or what they pay you for the roof, and how that changes over time. It decides what happens when you sell the building, re-roof, extend, or want the panels gone. And it allocates responsibility if something goes wrong.
The first three are usually clear. The last two are where the money and the trouble are.
The clauses to find
Selling the building. A roof lease binds the next owner. Some buyers and some mortgage lenders will not accept it, or will want it removed, and removal is at your cost under most agreements. Ask what the lease says about assignment and what the termination fee is in year five, year ten and year fifteen.
Re-roofing and repairs. If the roof needs work under the panels, who removes and refits them, who pays, and how quickly? On an old roof this is not hypothetical.
Rent and price escalation. Rent to you, or the price you pay for the electricity, usually rises with an index. Check which index, whether there is a cap, and what the price is in year twenty rather than year one.
Minimum output and what happens if it falls short. If the panels underperform, does the company have to fix them, and by when? Some agreements make the company’s obligation to maintain conditional and your obligation to provide the roof unconditional.
End of term. Do the panels become yours, do they come off, or does the agreement roll on? Who pays to remove them and make good the roof? Twenty-five-year-old panels are not an asset you want to be responsible for disposing of by surprise.
Insurance and liability. Who insures the panels, and whose insurer pays if the array is blamed for a roof leak or a fire? Tell your own buildings insurer either way; some policies require it.
Who these deals suit
They can work well for a business with a large, sound roof, high daytime electricity use and no appetite for capital spend, and for some landlords. They suit homeowners less often, because the income is small, the term is long and the effect on a future sale is real. In every case the question is not “is it free?” but “what have I given up, for how long, and what does it cost to undo?”
What to do next
Before signing, read the clauses above and write down the answer to each in one line. If any answer is “it doesn’t say”, that is the answer. If you would like an engineer’s read of the whole document, the technical obligations as well as the commercial ones, that is the Contract and Lease Check; a solicitor should still read it for the legal side, and I will happily join a call with them.