Home Solar

I am looking for con vs pro of home solar installer.
I did google search on some big name company like Tesla, Vivint, and EnergySage. Some people suggest to have a local installer instead.

I would like to hear your personal experience regarding such topic and please drop your favorite installer.
Thanks guys !

It's all about the $/kw installed and how long the panel manufacturer will guarantee the power output. All solar panels degrade over their lifetime (20+year) but some degrade faster than others. I had an excellent experience with Sunpower and their installation. There are many local PV contractors that will install a huge variety of panels, but with the amount of money you will be investing I would suggest going with either Sunpower or someone that installs Kyocera panels. Both panel companies have a long track record of making very robust product that continue to provide reliable power many years down the road. Also if you have the capital available and own your own home it makes more sense to buy the panels outright than to use one of the lease programs. Check the tax deduction you can get for the panel install, if you begin the project this year it should be 26%.

  I live in the same county as you and went with a company called HiLight Solar.  I found them to be professional, great customer service and a fair price.  Like all construction, I would recommend getting at least 3 quotes.  We went with enough KW to cover our annual electricity use. 

  I did a lot of analysis on electricity cost, our use, and the initial cost of solar.  Based on what we paid, the panels will completely pay for themselves within 8 years for our situation.  The panels are rated to last at least 25 years.  I should also point out that PG&E actually still charges you a minimum $10 per month for electricity hookup.  I believe SawTooth is correct that the feds will cover up to 26% of the total cost this year.  Down from 30% last year.

  If you have full sun, it's a great option that will undoubtedly save you money.  One other consideration is thinking about how old your roof is.  If you are looking at a roof that is 20 years old, you may want to think about doing that at the same time.  Ours was only 4-5 years old, so it seemed ok to install them and they should roughly the same life.  We'll see.

  Good luck!

Yes good point Yakker, our panel installation was preceded by re roofing the house as the shingles were almost 20 years old.... It was an expensive year for house maintenance. You definitely don't want to have the solar panels installed only to have to take them off a few years down the road to re-roof the house.

Another point to keep in mind is the possibility of going all electric. When we installed our system we changed our furnace and water heaters to heat pumps. We are all electric now. We had a local solar contractor install Kyocera panels that produce 6.3 kW.

A lot of good points given. Thanks guys.
I have not thought about upgrading *all major appliances to all electric yet, but it's something I will keep in mind. It's going to cost a lot.

I went and look at Sunpower and didn't see any Kyocera panels. Is it something I need to explicitly request?
What was your price per watt at that time you got it installed ?

I went with a local Santa Rosa company called Suntegrity. Great experience with them. It took a good 4 months of waiting for the installation, which they said would be the case with all of the new homes being rebuilt after the fire.
The install took one day. The guys that did the work were awesome. Clean and pretty work. I was nervous about the city inspection based on another friend’s experience, but I had zero issues.
 I went with 16 LG panels. I also went with an Enphase micro inverter (Petaluma company) on each panel as opposed to one large inverter. If one craps out the others will still function, and the warranty was better. The install was completed in October of 2019, so I haven’t seen what the actual efficiency will be yet.
I’ve got an app that tells me real time accumulation of what each panel is/has sent back to the grid. Even through the winter I haven’t racked up any electric charges. I’m still learning.

Hey Chet,

I've priced solar first in '15, then in summer '17 with installation at the end of '17. Things could have changed since then, but here are couple of things I learned.

1. Prices on install are going down.
2. I had limitation on number of panels on the roof. Some panels get much less sun than others. In some cases this would make lots of difference, and you might be better off with fewer, but more efficient panels. More efficient panels cost un-proportionally more. Make sure you compare apples to apples.
3. Good installer will come with (expensive) tool to calculate it. Most won't. Google has (had?) tool to estimate it too.
4. After sizing your system when comparing quotes you might want to compare both cost per watt DC, and cost per watt AC, per year. I was surprised how different these were from different installers.
5. As always, installers vary. I won't recommend mine even though after he made a major screwup he volunteered to fix it. I'm afraid others would not.
Also think of warranty, everybody promises 10-25 years for different things, but how will you get it 10 years later and for how much.

There were more, but I'm not sure how relevant they are anymore. Ping me of you have questions

I installed solar in 2005 back when Enron was sticking it to everybody artificially driving up cost, no regrets being an early adopter.  My system has 167w Sharp panels with a 25 year warranty, today you can get 350w panels. My only problem was my inverter which cost me $5k failed after 9 years, a replacement cost $1k.  In that failure I tried to have the original installer Sierra Pacific Solar do the repair but they would not return my call.  I found another smaller company which gave me great service.  So my lessons are...

1- Picking equipment, think about who would service your unit in our out warranty. 
2- If you have a failure and your original installer will not do the work or goes out of business, who will (so big mainstream equipment/install that can be serviced)
2- Things will always get better and most time cheaper over time.  Solar in my view is a great investment in the past, more so now
3- Utilities like PG&E have an unlimited appetite for your hard earned money