The 6.8 KW (peak) solar system that these folks installed for me really rocks! So if you are…read moreplanning to install a solar system, look no further and hire this company. I say this because I did my homework right and had obtained over six estimates, and this company beat all the other five not only on price and quality, but also on other (rather important) things as you can see below.
1. Price: This company beat all the others by nearly 20%, and all the other five estimates came very close to one another to the point where I was suspecting that there is some sort of illegal "price fixing" that is rampant industry-wide, but not for this company since it came far away (and below) all the others.
2. Equipment Quality: The system they installed was the most advanced compared to all the other bids. It used higher-end Panasonic panels, and Enphase micro-inverters and combiner. Others bid for lesser-quality no-name panels with one string inverter and a set of optimizers. After much research, I think a micro-inverter based system is superior to the string-inverter based system (so don't listen to the confusing information you find on the web, which portrays the two types of systems as being "equivalent"). So with a total of just 20 panels, my projected annual solar energy production should be about one and a half times my consumption. This should bring down my PG&E bill to the minimum $10/month, and should be able to provide all the electric energy needed for an extra electric car I may purchase in the future.
3. System design: This company had the most precise and realistic design, and that is very important because some of the bids I received were not realistic as they sketched more panels on my South-facing side of the roof than that side could possibly fit. This inflates the projected energy production, but is NOT realistic. In my case, the optimal design was to use the Southern-facing and Eastern-facing sides of the roof and to arrange the panels 50/50 on both sides. This company nailed the design right, but other bids like I said was either plain wrong, or were not realistic. With this design I was able to get a peak production of 6.2 KW, which is close to the theoretical 6.8 KW peak (the difference being mostly due to the orientation of my house).
4. Consumption and Net Monitoring: Most contractors let you monitor ONLY the energy production of your solar system, but this company gave me the ability to monitor the CONSUMPTION of energy by my house and the net energy exchanged between me and utility company on an instantaneous basis (actually every 15 minutes) and on the same Enlighten App as shown in the picture. This is really useful if you would like to do any energy planning in your house to see who/what is really consuming electricity. Granted that you can see the consumption on your utility website, but that data is one or two days delayed and does not show up in the same view as the production, and these two problems make the data from the utility company useless for that purpose.
5. Other: All the folks of the company I have dealt with are ethical in their dealing and are reasonable. The company installed the system in two days, which is very quick. Getting the consumption monitoring to work correctly took a while longer though.