Good quality. Incredible Salesmanship.
When you enter a solar installation agreement, you're entering into a long-term business relationship: there is a months-long installation process, followed by the years of workmanship guarantee and technical support. You don't want this with these guys.
Run the other way.
We're fans of the underdog and tried to give the "local" provider a chance -- even if it seemed a bit pricier. Chris Reilly and Don Tonic are not reliable.
We gave the thumbs up at the end of April, signed at the start of May, confirmed that the June deadline of worked for them, and we didn't have "fully" functional panels until December. We paid in full, months ago. We lost our locked mortgage interest rate because the project was delayed.
Even now, Don Tonic, the owner and president of the company, will schedule calls where he doesn't show up. He actively ignores texts. The only project progress we've had has been by asking one of his employees to come by.
Don Tonic is not responsive. When Don did communicate, he spent a full month repeating: "It will be finished tomorrow." What was particularly infuriating about this was that he would refuse to schedule the team to come out for two days instead of one, insisting that they would finish in one day. He did this over and over, for over a month. That's right: even though he was clearly wrong every single time, he continued to ignore questions, and repeat the same deaf line of "we only need one day", and then delay the scheduling that he is in charge of.
We have a 10kW array that yielded max 2kWh a day, despite sunny weather and lack of shade. For non-technical folks: that is very little output given the number of panels we purchased -- even when you account for facing West and a 45 degree tilt. Now the panels have a ground-fault, so zero production.
I'm happy to share text conversations with him + pics of the array. I will say the handiwork looks great, since the panels are all black. That said, they made an extra couple of holes in the house without asking us. Their clean-up attempts were rushed because, as noted above, they hadn't even got the panels to work.
Go with the company that has a contract clause which protects your production guarantee. Or another small company. It's incredibly exhausting to have to follow up with these guys every day for just the bare minimum. In the warmest sense, it's hurtful. In the coldest sense, this is a business transaction and they are in breach of contract, and apparently, they do not seem to care.
I'm giving them two stars because, despite the flexibility they showed at the beginning of the process, in the end:
Do the solar panels work? Not right now.
Did we lose our interest rate? Yes.
Is Solar Plus going to repair the ground fault? Doesn't look like it.
Are they still in breach of contract? Yes.
Are they responsive about it? No.
Are there other options? Yes. read more