Yuma County starts looking into options for financing solar panels

Yuma County administrators will start talking to previous clients of the solar panel company Solon to explore the possibility of installing solar panels on top of parking roofs at multiple county buildings.

Solon has provided solar panels throughout the Southwest. What they’re offering Yuma County is the installation of solar panels that carry a 25-year warranty in the parking lots of multiple county buildings. Some of those buildings include the Yuma County Main Library, the San Luis Library, the Foothills Library, the Public Health Services building and the Public Works building, among others.

Solon installed solar panels in the parking lots in the City of Yuma town hall in the Fort Yuma Health Center.

After the president and vice-president of the 13-year-old, Tucson-based Solon Corporation spoke at the Yuma County Board of Supervisors meeting Monday, the supervisors passed a motion to talk to previous clients who have both purchased and leased solar panels. The action will allow the board to gain a better understanding of the options it has before deciding what to do.

The question of whether to buy or to lease comes from a split in the decisionmaking process between Supervisor Martin Porchas, who’s hesitant to purchase solar panels because of worries over Solon’s longevity, and Supervisor Russell McCloud, who sees the savings that purchasing will bring and has experience with buying solar panels for residential purposes.

“If the company (who sells us the solar

panels) goes bankrupt and we’re leasing, they come get it. If we purchase it and the company goes bankrupt, we’re stuck with it,” Porchas said. “If we’re thinking 5 to 10 years out and the company goes bankrupt and a new company comes in, they’re not going to be on the same contract that we agreed to with the old one.”

The city of Somerton had a similar experience, Porchas said.

“They bought their solar panels from a company that went bankrupt and had no one to do maintenance on it,” Porchas said. “They even had a local contractor install it, but they couldn’t do anything about some of the problems they had because all they did was install it.”

For McCloud, the better option is purchasing because of the savings.

“When you lease, you’re giving up savings,” McCloud said. “The long-term savings in this case would be well over $1 million. It’s a better long-term investment when you buy. When you lease, you’re using other people’s money.”

According to Solon’s estimates, purchasing solar panels for all 11 of the buildings for which Solon has proposed the equipment would save the county about $3.8 million over 25 years versus the county’s current energy system.

Leasing solar panels would save the county $2.4 million over the same 25 years.

The board passed a motion to talk to previous clientele of Solon who have purchased panels and customers who have leased them. Also in that motion was a plan to let Arizona Public Service Co. read through the contract that Yuma County would be signing with Solon and consider any advice from the utility regarding the transaction.