07/20/2017
Anonymous
I did my homework and educated myself about residential solar. I'm glad I did because it sure saved me money and future headaches. I got three bids. One company was an hour late to the appointment and sent some kid out that had no idea what he was talking about. I knew more about solar than he did. The second company was more professional, but gave me a proposal that seemed rather high based on other systems I had researched. They were also pressuring me to sign a contract right then. The third company that came out, Powerco Solar, was very knowledgeable and professional. They were quite detailed in their evaluation and told me that my electrical service panel needed an upgrade. At first I thought they were just trying to up-sell me, but then they went through a detailed explanation with me and showed me the calculations. I was glad they did. After doing some additional research, I learned that if I did not upgrade the panel, the system would be dangerously overloaded, even if it passed inspection. Neither of the other two companies caught this problem. Powerco Solar was also the lowest bid. Even though they were using optimizers rather than less expensive micro-inverters, they still came in a lot less than the other two companies. And there was no pressure to make an immediate decision. The installation process went smoothly, although it took a week longer than estimated (6 weeks) because the city was slow in approving the building permit. I found it rather difficult to communicate with the installation crew because of a language barrier, but they seemed to know what they were doing and didn't leave a mess when they were finished. When my system was finally installed and operational, the project manager came out the next day and helped me set up my monitoring. It has been functioning perfectly and my first utility bill showed a dramatic decline in my energy cost ($12). Although Powerco Solar is not perfect, they came close and I would recommend them to anyone wanting to install solar to their home.