The installation by Solar City was done in a very professional manner. Crews were on time and no problems at our home. We were told by Chad Schott, the sales rep, that the system Solar City would design would take care of all our consumption. We had provided 12 months worth of P G and E bills for Solar City to digest. Now that the system has been installed for 3 months, we have just received a bill from P G and E for $89.00. I contacted Paul Nelson with Solar City customer service who stated that we shouldn't be getting any bills from P G and E. I told him that Chad informed us that the only bill we should receive is a monthly connection charge of $10-20, which we were fine with. Paul Nelson told me he would look at our account and get back to me. He stated that based on the system installed we should not be getting any consumption bills from P G and E. I have not received any call back from Nelson. The only email I received was from a customer service rep in Nevada. In his email he proceeded to tell me that he didn't see anything wrong with our design.
Here is what he wrote: "I hope this message finds you well! This is Alex Lyakhov with Solar City Customer Care, and I hope that you are having a terrific day!
I understand that you reached out to us regarding a bill you received from your utility company. Regarding your utility bill, the amount of your bill depends on your system's estimated offset, your consumption and your system's performance. Your system offset indicates how much electricity our system is providing to you, as opposed to how much the utility is providing to you. We obtain your pre-solar utility bills, and then we create a system that will provide as close to 100% of your electricity as possible.
Consumption also plays a very important role. If you consume more than what your system can produce, you will receive a charge from your utility for that extra power, even if your offset is at 100%. Remember, the offset was based on what you consumed historically. If your consumption changes, so does your offset. Please keep in mind that every kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity from the panels is cheaper than every kWh of electricity from your utility company.
If your system performance is less than optimal, this will also decrease your offset and result in a higher bill from your utility. Reasons that the system performance is less than optimal include extra shading from nearby trees or other objects, dust or dirt on the panels, or seasonal weather variations. I see that your system is performing very well. You can view this production by logging in to your MySolarCity account and clicking on PowerGuide.
We also encourage customers to allow a full 12 month period to go by before analyzing savings because panels will naturally produce different amounts of electricity throughout the 4 seasons. Less electricity is produced in the winter because the sun is lower in the sky and the days are shorter. However, the opposite is true in the summer. The more electricity the panels produce, the less electricity you would have to buy from the utility company. Since the panels are performing very well, please feel free to reach out to your utility company if you have any questions or concerns about any bills they send to you.
If there is anything else we can assist you with, please don't hesitate to contact us at 888-765-2489, option 2 for immediate assistance. Thank you, and have a wonderful day!"
Warm regards,
Alex Lyakhov
Email Customer Care Specialist | SolarCity
As you can see, this is a standard boilerplate response from them. So as of this writing no word from Paul Nelson nor our sales rep Chad Schott. I hope every potential customer reads, re-reads, and questions the integrity of Solar City. I have noticed that most of the senior executives have left the company now that Elon Musk has bought Solar City. Beware of these people.
Ted Bowman read more