[g129774]

i appreciate your comment, i'm glad that industry is developing mitigations, even if they are profit driven. i haven't looked at solar contracts in a few years (hence "were" in op), but i'm sure recent improvements make them significantly more attractive. like a sibling commentor given the massive information assimetry i would prefer significant regulatory scrutiny, specifically standartization, mandatory disclosure of known externalities, perhaps established by cfpb.

the op link though is about solar installations approaching their lifetime, which means contracts from 10-20 years ago. i'd like to point out that you started with a very strong statement ("in practice not true"), which was then variously hedged. more importantly the fact that in practice the mitigations have manifested ("repowering is a windfall") doesn't after the fact negate that the initial contracts were exploitative. in my experience simply verbalizing and pricing various hidden factors (i used Shannon L. Ferrell's "understanding solar energy agreements" as starting point), decomissioning being one of them but other points in ferrell also played a role, or even just developing a rudimentary payments schedule, ended up strongly discouraging land owners (and smh als the solar representatives). i'm glad that we're having this dialogue though, because i'm sure there was no malicious intent behind those omittions, and solar industry has become significantly more transparent since.