Sunrun

Everybody has their own wants. You can purchase it yourself or rent it from them. We’re older so we opted to go with, “Okay, let's just sign a lease for 25 years and pay X amount of dollars over the years.” They're responsible for all the equipment, maintaining it, replacing it. If we've got another 20, 30 years tops, to live, it would be very surprising. We may expire before the lease does. Some of my friends’ kids have actually gone and purchased the solar. They’re not paying anybody anything. So that's good for them because they're younger. But we are older, and we’ve got three kids that are hard on all the gaming stuff and stuff for school, and they use a lot of electricity. They're probably going to be here another 10 years. So far, our bill has reduced drastically. And it's still going to be lower once we start paying the monthly payments, but I just don't quite understand the whole how much.

I usually do things for a year to see, and of course, solar, it's not going to be the same year to year. It all depends on what Mother Nature does. You can't say to the solar company, “Oh, but you told me this.” If Mother Nature doesn't give you sun, you don't get this. That's the one thing that some people don't get. We don't have it on our roof. We have it on our land. They did everything. The structure, putting it in, working with GMP and GMP working with them.

And if we had been back where we were, we were only $95 a month before the kids moved in. And I probably never would have gone to solar had it not been for the increase in electricity from the kiddos. But I started looking into solar and Sunrun does seem to be one of the better companies. Vermont has some local companies. But I didn't go with local because they haven't been around as long as Sunrun has, in looking, and I wanted a company that has been through a lot of the stuff and has been doing it for years.

Also, the people need to be patient. It's just that they're behind. It's something that is taking off. And they can't get the people to work. They're not isolated from all of this people not working either. So a big part of that is if people aren't patient, they're not going to be happy with them. But it isn't their fault. And they were very accommodating. They tried to resolve issues as quickly as possible, and they never left me hanging. If I had a question, they got back to me. So far, I'm happy with them. And I got a 25-year contract with them, so I'm hoping it continues that way. I've been giving Chris’ card to everybody because I really like it. There are just things that are preventing them from being able to have this really wonderful experience, unfortunately.

It's a big investment. I look at it like, “Okay. I'm paying $147 a month. But I pay more than that for insurance on my house. So I'm paying that to maintain my solar panels. I have a hailstorm, and I am SOL if I own these panels.” The maintenance is totally paid for. Unless, of course, somebody goes out there and intentionally damages it. We're lucky we have a lot of acres so my kids aren't even near it. The $147 is cheaper than what I would pay for insurance, because I don't have to put it on my homeowner's policy. If I sell my house, it can transfer. They can pull it. I pass away, my kids inherit it. I also checked with the kids before I did it and said, “Hey, you guys are going to be happy with this contract because it can transfer to you.” I like that fact.

So I did look into a lot of different things, and Sunrun has done a good job of thinking of all the different life wishes that people could want. The owning, the renting. You can either opt to have the batteries or not. They let you customize it yourself. And everybody's happy. Kudos to them and all their people. They did a really good job, and the subcontractors were awesome.

Sunrun was one of the preferred vendors to install, which was good. In the future, electric rates will probably go up steadily. So, it locks me in at a fixed rate for that period of time. But as a consumer, I still have to buy the equipment upfront. I called the mortgage company, but the finance company that finances all that, I’m still paying money. So, in a sense, I could pay it forward for the savings in the future or I pay it as I go along. But in reality, to the homeowner, I don't know if I’m really saving money. I’m just replacing the electric bill to pay for the equipment service, pay on high.

So, from a short term, it's not a benefit to the consumer. For the mid to long term, it would most likely be because of the energy cost going up. Eventually, the equipment has to be replaced, so I have to pay for it all over again. But in my mind, I have the funds to pay for it. So, I assume just pay for it upfront. Help this energy crisis that people talk about, that it's there and it's not there.

It's good that utility companies give that incentive, but it actually gets paid back. To me, the real beneficiary of it is the equipment suppliers. If you install the equipment yourself, that's probably a good deal. But the average consumer cannot. He's got to hire someone to go on the roof and put it all in. So, they're going to charge. Contractors charge whatever the going rate is and they're the beneficiaries of that tax reduction or the rebate that the consumer gets for that. That's why the consumer is caught in the middle. They're just trying to help the energy situation and that's all.

We had a power outage three months ago. The transformers went down for four or five hours, but my backup battery only lasted a couple of hours. I had lights on or TV going on. After a while, it just shut off until the morning solar panels went back on. When the grid came back on, some transformer needed repair, then the power came back. It tells me, "Is the battery helping anybody or is it just another capital expense in the whole thing?” Which then, if eliminated, then that cost of the panel will be 20,000 instead of being 30,000, which makes it maybe the payback is quicker. The battery probably helps because it regulates storage, and then it goes back to the grid and your credit is good. In the long run, the credits are just going to be even. I don't think we're going to get a huge benefit on getting money back or a reduction, even though we've put more kilowatts back into the grid. So, it's a wash.

If you do this financially, a month to month, year to year, you probably won't do it. If the regulators like the government force the builders to install the system in a house, then it just becomes a part of construction of the house and it helps utilities not spike in use of power which this free solar stuff that's out here. It's not just gonna activate these solar panels and give you power. We're still paying for the electricity, whether we're paying for the mortgage or the finance, the equipment and the installation. So, as a consumer, we're just a breakeven. But for the overall environment, utilities and burning less oil or having this peak demand situation, the battery helps the peak demand because you can store it and dump it back into the system.

I can't get data until maybe after a few years after I see what it's really doing. But I know from a daily basis, it looks like our panels are creating enough where we're getting a credit after using it for the air conditioning and the daily house utilities that we did. It's showing that we're getting a bit of extra kilowatt hours after using it for the air conditioning. But our area is not a high AC using area, except during two, three months during the summer. And even then, it's only during the hot afternoon. It cools off in the evening and goes away. But I know it's always geographic-specific. It's different in different areas. But the software that's applied to that Sunrun, I wish it was a bit more informative as to what it's actually doing on a 24-hour basis.

Because right now, it looks like it only works from midnight until 4:00 or 5:00 when it dumps the battery into the grid. But it doesn't give me any data between 5:00 to midnight. I'm still getting power in using the panels. I know that it's still sunny until 7:00. So, I got another two hours with the sun that is not recording. It's saying that all my solar panel's going 100% to the grid, and then I'm using electricity from San Diego Gas, so many kilowatts for the day, and then it gives me the net difference.

Two separate books are being kept. One for the kilowatts that come into our house, and then the amount of solar kw that is pushed back into the grid. And then, in our solar panel, it's pushing so much kilowatts back into the grid and I don't see the software showing what that really is. So, come next April, even though the utility company is not charging me, but they said that first month, I have a $168 balance due. But every month, it's $10. That's some kind of service fee just to keep the account open.

So, I owe maybe up to 300. But at the end of the day, even though it says I got a credit of 3,000 kilowatts now and it slowly goes up maybe 5 or 10 by the end of the year, I didn't know how much they will give us credit back whether or not still over 300 or whether I'll have enough credits to offset that. I end up with a positive, will I get any cash back from the electric company? The software doesn't say it and I can't understand it. So, do something on that software. There should be more clarification. I'll know when April comes if I have to pay a bill and I'm gonna say, "Wasn't worth it at all." Because even though it looks like I’m making solar, I’m not getting anything back.

Reading through a lot of horror things about other companies too, like, "Oh, after we installed our panels, no one ever get in touch with us, and our panel actually stopped working and no one knew. And then, we were trying to...", I was a little bit skeptical. I talked to Maria and she said, "You know what? If you would like to, I can call another customer," who she has been helping for a long time and around my area that I can talk to.

Our winter bill is even more than our summer bill. It's crazy. Maria was able to help me recalculate and meet my needs, and also my goal. She was very accommodating, and she was able to help me and design the panel to be instead of eight, it's 11 panels that we have up on our roof. It was great once the system was on. It went by so quickly. Maria, who is my sales rep, is amazing. She constantly called me back to give me updates and what I need to do and look out for and things that I need in preparation for the application and even the installation process. Everything went very well and very smoothly.

But the only thing that I wish I would have done a bit differently was to not install my solar panel at the time that I did. Because the last winter, we installed a solar panel. It was installed during October, and we generate a bit of electricity, but over the wintertime, it's not enough to sustain over the winter, and we still have to pay electricity. I would have gone for like a spring installation instead of fall. It didn't help us during the wintertime. So, I wasted a good amount of five months of our $1 per month promotion. That was my biggest disappointment.

Sunrun does a good job based on what they commit. On the second contract, I signed with them this last year. My mindset was more that it was through Costco. But when I contacted them, they told me that they had nothing to do with Costco at that point, unless I bought the system outright. So there weren't many options. The first time, there were. I could lease it, and it would go through Costco. This time, they said they couldn't do anything that had to do with Costco. The contract would be a Sunrun contract. It gave me the idea that they were trying to stay away from Costco in case there was a problem.

I was walking in Costco and I was approached by one of the person said, "Hey, do you have a battery at your house?" And I said, "No, I don't." "Well, Sunrun offers one." I said, "Well, my bill has gone up. So I think I need more panels. I might as well look into the battery, too." And when my guy contacted me, he said, "Well, we would give you a contract with something to do with Costco if you buy the system outright." I said, "Well, I'm not gonna buy it outright. I would lease it again." So he said, "If you do that, we're going to be on our own. We're not going to have nothing to do with Costco." So, in other words, they are promoting their business through Costco, but when it comes down to the contract, they don't want to do anything with Costco anymore. It's bait-and-switch. I took it like a bad kind of a deal. But I still did it because I'm already a customer with them. They gave me a $2,000 gift card for doing that.

I recommended my neighbor. He was good at first. He signed a contract. He backed out of the contract before the three days they give you to back off. I asked him why. He said, "Because the rate doesn't sound right." So he decided to go back. And they give you a referral deal if you refer someone. But they didn't give me that. I didn't care at that point. My neighbor still got it. I have my own business. So I'm a man of my word. If I tell a customer "I'm going to do this" I do it for them regardless. I contacted the rep and said, "Well, you gotta pay the person that signed him up." I said, "I referred my neighbor to you first." "Yeah, but they backed off on the contract." But other than that, the system works fine.

Sunrun gave me a different project manager after the project started. I wasn't aware that they made that change, so I initially kept sending emails to her rather than the new project manager. Disclosing the new project manager would have gone over better. Another concern was Sunrun did not inform me about one aspect of the battery backup system, and clearly, that caused some extra expenses on my part. So, I told Sunrun, “I want the battery backup system for the house. And I want it set up so that if there's a power outage, the battery backup system automatically kicks in so I never lose power to certain parts of the house.” They set up the battery backup, but they didn’t connect it to the circuitry of the house, or they had not planned to do so

They changed my request and when I found out later, they said, “Oh, we did tell you. It was on the documents.” I went back to the document, and lo and behold, it said "outlet for battery backup system". I realized they were just gonna put an outlet on the outside of the house, and so to power my home, I would need to run an electrical extension cable out to the battery and then bring that into the house and plug things in. That was not what I wanted. I wanted to be able to turn on the lights and do a lot more. I wouldn’t be able to plug that stuff into an outlet. I wish they had made that clear upfront, like, “Oh, you had asked for the battery backup to just kick on automatically during a power outage, and that we changed to be an outlet-based power supply system.”

That was something I did not like. I asked, “What do I need to change this?” They said, “Oh, you'll need to hire an electrician to take the four parts of the house that you want powered and put them on the main panel outside rather than a separate electrical panel, which is in one of the bedrooms.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” I had to hire an electrician to do this for a few hundred dollars. I had to complete that and that was separate as well, so that was on my own expense. I wish they told me that upfront. They also said they had to do it because those circuits through the house were on the subpanel in the bedroom rather than on the main panel outside. I was like, “Okay. If you had disclosed that to me upfront, I would have known to ask about that upfront.”

Another thing is I originally thought they would do the installation that November or December of 2019. However, they had some of their installation crew busy at the time, so they couldn't work on that. They rescheduled to March/April of 2020. That was when the shutdown started because of the pandemic. The electrical crew couldn’t come out. It got rescheduled yet again. Finally, the electrical crew came out in June to do the work. They did a thorough job. They were professional as well as easy to interact and work with. They knew their stuff and I could talk to them, like as one engineer to another. It was like, “Okay. This guy understands stuff.” I liked the electrical crew that came out. They also used high-quality materials from the equipment to the battery and to the solar panels.

I recommend the materials that they used. I also liked working with guy who came out and did the roof survey, where to put panels and did the electrical analysis of the house. On the other hand, project management could’ve been handled better. Overall, I still recommend Sunrun, but just know that you might have to be on top of things. You have to look at the details and some of the documents to be fully aware of what's going on ‘cause they may not disclose it. “Oh, we changed this on one of the documents or changed this thing on the electrical diagram.” You also need to know what that means.

When the energy company put their meter on and we turned on the solar system, of course, it takes time for it to all download the data. So, the electricity company didn't bill us and we couldn't find a bill for a whole month. The bill ended up being $500. So, I had to go on a payment plan. I just got my first solar bill, which was quoted, and it was right on time. But I called energy and said, "As hot as it is, you mean to tell me that we didn't produce enough kilowatts or whatever you are, so you have to charge me an extra 100?" So, that's 200, which we were already paying 255 a month.

We have a computer and I started unplugging everything that I don't watch. It's just my husband and I. We just unplug everything because that's how the energy gets used. Hopefully, it all even outs. Because if it's gonna be 255, then I'm gonna feel bad that I bought it, even though I really want to help save the environment. Also, they said they would call me in a couple of days. So, when I referred my dad, I get a referral fee and he gets a signing fee. He hasn't received that signing bonus, but I received my reward. When I called, they said, "Oh, they canceled it." I don't know why because he's entitled to that $1,500 signing bonus. So, I'm waiting for somebody to call me back because it has been a week now. Other than that, Sunrun was very professional and on time.