Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: questions about financing solar

[Chuck Harrison (cfharr]

We installed a 14kW array on our Common House about 8 years ago, in
Washington State. Rules may have changed but we were able to structure it
so that a few individual homeowners had their names on the project, used
funds borrowed from our treasury, and paid back the loan by passing thru
their tax credits and state incentives.


On Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 8:51 PM Philip Semanchuk <philip [at] semanchuk.com> 
wrote:

>
>
> > On Jul 16, 2023, at 10:55 PM, Lisa Wolf <tigerlisa [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I am Lisa Wolf, a member of the Eco Team at Bay State Cohousing in
> Malden,
> > MA. We just moved in to our newly-built building last November, and are
> > investigating the best way to install solar, including how to finance it.
> >
> > How did you finance your solar panels? Did you do it through your HOA or
> an
> > LLC? Were you able to get any or all of the new Federal incentives from
> the
> > Inflation Reduction Act?
>
> Hi Lisa,
> The IRA contains significant incentives for solar. Non-profits get the tax
> benefit immediately as a rebate, if I understand correctly. However being a
> non-profit comes with certain legal obligations, so some (many? almost
> all?) HOAs are set up as for-profit entities. Ours (Pacifica in Carrboro,
> NC) is one of them, so I've been investigating our options for reaping the
> solar tax benefits in the IRA.
>
> For-profit entities (and private homeowners) get the federal solar benefit
> as an income tax credit. This is a problem for our HOA because we pay a
> nominal amount in income taxes (< $100/year) so it would take decades to
> reap the benefit of a solar tax credit in the $5-10k range.
>
> The IRA includes a "transferability" clause which allows for the sale of
> these tax credits. That's a potential avenue for us to turn our tax credits
> into cash. However, the practical details of transferability are still
> being figured out, so it remains to be seen whether or not it we can use it.
>
> Hope this helps
> Philip
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Cohousing-L mailing list -- Unsubscribe, archives and other info at:
> http://L.cohousing.org/info
>
>
>
>