I entered a family members address into the SolarTO website and came back with this data.

I was happier than a ‘pig in shit’ and told an acquaintance about the possibilities and they said “I don’t think it’s as great as it appears. Investing into $SPX over 25 years would give you a better return, based on the historical data. You’d probably be better off investing the money.”

Looking at the $SPX over the last 25 years it’s 4x in value, and so my acquaintance was right. On April 1, 1999 the $SPX was 1328.72 and today (April 25th, 2024) it’s 5048.42. That’s a 3.79x gain.

Looking at the SolarTO numbers it’s a 3.21x gain.

The difference in gain between the two is 0.58x, and that’s significant.

For people with the ability to invest in solar outright (no loans, and there doesn’t seem to be any grants available in Toronto, Ontario) why would anyone put solar on (read: what incentive is there to sink money into something providing a worse return than investing into ETFs and stocks?