Loooong review, so I put the bottom line first. If anyone wants more details - keep reading.
Bottom Line: Choose someone else! Ross knows his stuff and uses good products. His installers are hit or miss in terms of attention to detail. Solar Tech Elec is polite, but customer service is not their strong suit, and there seems to be a certain level of incompetence somewhere in the company. This project took FOREVER!!!! In the end, we essentially got what we wanted, but I'm not sure how much of that was because we had the support of the co-op, and/or because I hounded them incessantly to do their job.
May 2018 - Met with Ross as part of a solar cooperative program. Discussed system size and product offerings. Liked the product and price, and signed contract. There were errors in the contract (that we asked them to fix), and this should have been our cue to abort. Instead, we signed and made the 25% payment.
mid-July 2018 - Permit finally pulled, kit ordered and delivered after multiple e-mails, texts, and phone calls regarding installation date. Delivery was 2 hours late (after "business hours") with no notification whether or not driver was still coming. We were asked to send a photo of the packing slip because there had been mix-ups with some of the other deliveries and Solar Tech Elec wanted to ensure we had the right items for installation. At that time my husband indicated it looked like there was only one inverter, and we wanted multiple microinverters. We were told we had what we needed. Installation proceeded, and the techs seemed to know what they were doing. We were asked if we wanted to make the remaining 75% payment, but we opted only for the required 50%.
August 2018 - Didn't pass inspection because plans didn't match our system. Looked at our contract again, and discovered they installed a different product (there were 2 options offered by the co-op, but we specified in our contract we wanted Enphase with microinverters, not SolarEdge with optimizers). Contacted Ross, he gave us a few options, and we elected to switch out the system for what we had specifically requested in our contract.
September 2018 - Correct system ordered and switched out. Second crew was different and didn't do quite such a nice job as the first crew. Didn't pass next inspection because there were some screws/washers missing and the plans were wrong. Also, we discovered some minor damage to the asphalt shingles on our roof (we had a new roof put on in May anticipating the solar installation). No one mentioned the damage to us.
October 2018 - New set of plans provided, but didn't pass inspection because plans still weren't correct. Got another set of plans, and finally passed inspection in mid-October. Reminded Solar Tech Elec to install squirrel guard. A crew was sent out one week later (without prior notice). Luckily, my husband was home, because they showed up without a ladder and borrowed ours! The office submitted Duke Energy net metering request, we made our final 25% payment (very end of October).
November 2018 - Final invoice was sent. Requested this be corrected - didn't have quantities listed in 'Quantity' column, and monitoring system wasn't listed anywhere. One week after final payment, Duke Energy informed us information provided on net metering application was incomplete/inaccurate. That was fixed and resubmitted by the office within one day. Duke Energy installed our new meter on November 13. Had roof shingles replaced at our own expense because didn't want to have to deal with Solar Tech Elec ever again. read more