Review for Solar Tech Elec LLC

Office location: 1390 Gulf To Bay Blvd, Clearwater FL, 33755

08/25/2024
Andrea Palm Harbor, FL

Buckle up, this is a long review, but hopefully worth it if you use them to help make your decisions. If you want the Reader’s Digest / TLDR - I highly recommend Ross and STE. if you want better details, read on. I have always been interested in solar but knew I needed to wait till I was in my presumably forever home, which we now are. In the spring, I started looking into local solar companies. I lurked on community Facebook posts, spoke with neighbors, and lined up meetings with five companies that people had used. Ross was the first we met with, so at the time, we had no perspective. He made confident claims about his company, which I took with a grain of salt. We met with three more after him. Ross included not just the numbers in his estimate, but also detailed information about the system components so I could go look them up, which I did, so I could determine if other estimates were apples / oranges. His system components are the same as several of his competitors and he was almost $15k less expensive. I found that he explained the tax credits very well, and appreciate that if one wants to finance their system, Ross only uses an organization that charges no dealer fees. Another company that came to present to us tried to sell me on “a great rate” for financing and when I told him I would not pay dealer fees, he visibly got nervous and smirked and asked how I knew what those were. Needless to say we asked that guy to leave. Ross set our expectations very realistically considering we were installing the system in the dead of summer. He explained net metering in Florida very well with visuals to help drive the concept home. When we agreed to do business after I had interviewed other companies, another point of discussion was the fact that we have trees that shade our south roof facade. The trees are mature and beautiful and healthy, and they also don’t belong to us. So, there’s only so much we could do even if we wanted to. I got two tree trimming quotes and decided to take what they would have charged for that and buy more panels instead. In my research I discovered that even if the installer uses Enphase, they don’t always install ancillary parts of the systems and/or turn on all the options in the app, so you can’t see consumption vs production. Ross does. I geek out every day now looking at the data and knowing we are no longer slaves to Duke Energy and our thermostat. Ross remained communicative throughout the process. His installers have been with him for years. They were personable and professional when they were at our home. Celeste, his right hand office manager gal, is friendly and always quick to respond. I live local to his business HQ, so I’m also aware of several large commercial projects they did in the next town over. If you speak with him for an estimate, he will surely make the same confident claims about his business that he did with us. I can now say he lived up to all of them. That’s a rarity these days, so I give him credit for that and he deserves a great review.