A second opinion on your solar proposal, before you sign

What a solar proposal review and second opinion checks

A solar proposal is a sales document built on a handful of assumptions. Our solar proposal review is a second opinion built for exactly that: it finds those assumptions, tests each one, and tells you in plain English what the proposal is really offering. You get it in five business days, from an advisor with no installer, lender or manufacturer paying them. Maren Holloway, our Principal Advisor, signs off on every review.

Price per watt, normalized

We divide the cash price by the system’s DC watts and strip out financing costs, so quotes with different equipment can be compared fairly. Then we add back what the financing actually costs over its term.

The production estimate

Every savings figure rests on yearly kWh. We compare the proposal’s estimate with an independent one for your location, roof orientation and shading notes, and we check the degradation rate it assumes. A 10% optimistic production figure inflates every savings number that follows it by about the same amount.

Two escalators that are easy to confuse

One is a guess: how fast the proposal assumes utility rates will rise. The other is a contract term: how fast a lease or PPA payment rises. A 2.9% payment escalator sounds small, but over 25 years it nearly doubles the payment. By year 25 you’d pay about 1.99 times your first-year amount.

Dealer fees inside the loan

The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s 2024 report on solar financing found that lender “dealer fees” can raise a loan’s principal by 30% or more above the cash price, often without showing up in the stated APR. We ask for the cash price and the financed amount, and show you the gap.

Export credits under Kentucky tariffs

If a proposal values every kWh at the retail rate, it overstates savings for most new Kentucky customers. Under the NMS-2 tariffs, exported power earns $0.07534 per kWh at KU and $0.07089 at LG&E, the levels kept in the PSC’s 2026 rate-case orders. Co-ops, Kentucky Power and Duke Energy Kentucky have their own terms. We check the proposal against your actual tariff.

The tax credit that no longer exists

If a 2026 proposal for a system you’d own shows a 30% federal credit, ask why. That residential credit ended for expenditures after 2025.

Roof age and timing

If your roof will need replacing during the loan or lease term, the cost to remove and reinstall the panels belongs in the comparison.

Lease and PPA terms

We list the buyout schedule, end-of-term options and what happens if you sell the house. Then we compare the lease or PPA with buying on the same assumptions, as in our Lexington lease-versus-cash scenario.

Before you send it

Run the proposal through our free red-flag checklist and read 11 solar proposal red flags. If you find more questions than answers, that’s when a second opinion earns its fee. Our Kentucky net metering explainer covers the tariff side in depth.