Own or lease? It comes down to who fixes it when it breaks

Own the kit and you pay for it once, then you're responsible for everything: service, repairs and the day the inverter dies. Lease it, as with Elvy's subscription, and Elvy owns the hardware and handles the upkeep for a fixed monthly cost. The difference is less about price and more about who gets the phone call when something breaks.

Which one is right depends on whether you want to own a system or simply stop thinking about it. Below we cover what you take on when you own outright, what you actually lease in a subscription, who fixes it when it plays up, who carries the risk, and what happens the day you sell.

You pay for the whole system at once, or borrow for it, and then you own it. The solar panels, heat pump and battery become yours, a fixture that follows the house when you sell. You decide over everything and take the whole upside. That's the real advantage of buying.

But everything that happens to the kit after installation lands on you too. Warranties to keep track of, service to book, and the day the inverter, the system's brain, wears out and has to be replaced, long before the panels do. You're your own operations manager, whether you meant to be one or not.

The right to use a system that Elvy owns. Elvy installs solar panels, a heat pump and a battery, provides the hardware and optimises it against the electricity price. You pay a fixed amount a month to use it, with no upfront cost and no loan for the equipment. The price stays fixed for 15 years and is adjusted once a year by the consumer price index, never by the spot price.

So you don't own the panels on the roof, and that's the whole point. You skip the capital tied up in them, and you skip what comes with owning. Elvy owns the electricity and trades it, and that upside goes to Elvy. It's part of how a fixed fee adds up.

If you own the system, it's you. You troubleshoot, call a technician, wait for a spare part and pay the bill. An inverter that dies during a cold week in February is your problem to solve, and your cost.

If you lease it, it's Elvy's job to fix it, at no extra cost. Ideally you notice something was wrong only afterwards, if at all. That's the concrete difference behind the two models, and more often than the price, it's the one that decides which suits you.

Whoever owns. When you buy, you take on both the capital risk and the technology ageing. A component that wears out earlier than planned, a year with little sun, a shift in the technology that leaves your system dated before it's paid off, all of it lands on you. That's the price of also taking the whole upside.

The subscription swaps that uncertainty for a known amount. Elvy owns the equipment and carries the risk that it works. You pay the same in January as in July and never have to guess what the next repair costs, because it isn't your bill.

If you own it, it follows the house like any other fixture. The next owner takes over the system, and the responsibility for it.

If you lease through Elvy, the next owner can instead take over the subscription as part of the sale, with the same fixed fee and the same zero responsibility for running it. It's also possible to buy the system out if that suits better. What's simplest depends on the buyer, but a house where the energy is already sorted is rarely a drawback.

Ask yourself what you want: an asset to manage, or a system someone else fixes when it breaks. If you have the capital, the interest and the appetite to look after a system yourself, owning is a reasonable path, and you take the whole upside. If you want it to just work, you'd rather pay a fixed amount and hand the responsibility off.

Elvy is available today for villas and houses across Sweden, but not yet for flats. The price is set individually from an energy analysis of your house, because a list price would just be a guess. What it comes to for your particular house is something the analysis answers, not this article.