Sunrun Reviews

I called Sunrun about it. If I want to have my panels cleaned, I have to have them done by someone who works through them. I told Sunrun that I had a person who was gonna do everything else on my house and he said he could do the panels, and I wanted to check with them. They said, “No. Don't have him do that. We'll have someone come out and assess everything and let you know how much it would cost to have them done.” So I told the fellow that I was working with to do everything else but not the panels. This was at the beginning of last summer in May and it took the whole summer to get them to come out and figure out and tell me anything.

I ended up telling Sunrun that I would just have part of it done. I told them to clean the panels that were under the trees. They said that they would check on that. Then they called and said they had a guy that would come up and do it. I'm in Massachusetts and he was in Connecticut. Someone called me that the fellow was gonna come up that day to do the work. I asked how much it was gonna be and it was a lot more expensive than I was thinking it was gonna be.

The guy told me that it was more expensive because he was gonna do all the panels. But I told him that I didn't need all of them done. He said, “If I wanna come all the way out there and have all my equipment and go up to do it, I'm gonna do all of them.” So I canceled that. After that, I didn't have anyone to clean them. Now it's getting to the end of the summer and going into fall. So I called Sunrun again and I told them what happened. They said that they'll check into it and get back to me. Then they called me back and said that if it was too expensive and I just wanna have a few done, I can hire my own person to do it. So I waited all summer to have them tell me to have my own person do it who I had here already three months ago and now to have him come back, it would cost me more than it would have originally. I never got it done but it's not a big deal.

Sunrun sent out a couple of guys who supposedly knew something about sprinklers. They got out here and had never seen the impact sprinkler heads. I said, "I have an extra couple we can use." They said, "Oh, you have some. Do you have pipe too?" They were not prepared to do anything. And they were supposed to turn in a bill to somebody there, so they would send me payment for the sprinkler heads. But they never did. I'm not happy about that.

The program that we got, there was no money out of our pockets. And we have a guaranteed rate for 16 months. It's all financed. And after 16 months, it would go up. But it would still be cheaper than our electric bill. The only recent problem was last week. The app wouldn't work. It kept saying, "No data is available for yesterday." And the next day, it would say the same thing. That went on for almost a week. And I called and complained. Sunrun said, "There's a million people out there that their app isn't working, and we're trying to locate why it's not getting the data." Soon, it started working.

One month, we had a zero electric bill. This month, it's $2 and something. So, we're okay. A lot of days, it would say so much percent overcast or cloudy. I would sit here most days looking out and say, "There's not a cloud in the sky." So, the system must find something that it thinks is a cloud up there. The one month, it put in the bank. And the next month, it used most of it to pay all the availability charge. And the next month, we had a bit banked left. But that left us with $2.45 short. So, I'm happy with that. And it's because our air conditioners have to run a ton because of this weather.

In May, I hadn't really received much information of what was going on. I kept calling and writing to them to find out when it was going to happen because the summer months were coming. I really wanted some relief from the high bills, but it didn't happen. They kept saying that there was a hold up in the permits. They were waiting on the California permit to get approved, and there was some kind of problem with the title on my home. I live in Woods Creek Mobile Home Park, and it's in Jamestown. I own the home but not the land I sit on. So, I have to pay property taxes on the house and a monthly space rental fee. I owned a home previously and I had it in a family trust so that I was sole owner and trustee of the property. When the other house was sold and this one I acquired, I had them put it in the family trust name, which was under my father's name.

I think that caused some confusion in determining that I was the rightful owner of the house. Somehow, that got straightened up along the way and we waited on through the end of 2021. The agreement with Sunrun was that once the panels are turned on, they would pay the first six months. That was the perk to get you to sign up for it. So, we wouldn't have any PG&E bills for the first six months. I was still calling around in 2022. They finally said we are getting the approval. They worked with another company, which is called Bright Planet. Bright Planet is located in Contra Costa County. The technician lives in Pittsburgh, and then he had to drive to Livermore to get the company truck, and then from Livermore, up here. So, it was a long journey for all of this to get finalized, but he was very sweet, and talking with Bright Planet, they were always trying to answer my questions.

There is another company circulating Tuolumne County area called V3. They were installing some solar on the mobile home park next to us called Mill Villa. One of their installers was canvassing over this area to see if any of our homes here would adequate rooms to be able to have solar installations, and he noticed that our solar panels were on our house, but that the inverter was off. So, he tapped on our door and he talked to us for a while. I gave him information and he said, "Well, our company could remove those panels. We could install ours, and we could have you up and running right away, being that it's been over a year and you still have no power. That's ridiculous."

He wrote something to Sunrun that day, indicating that we were unhappy and that he was going to make a bid on our house and that. Then their legal department got involved and started writing back to me and talking about how they were going to sue us for $30,000 if we did anything like that, but they were sort of polite about it. They requested that we just hang on a little bit longer to let them get the permit straightened out, so that they could go ahead and turn the installation on. I got back in touch with V3 and I said, "Look, let's just back off. We're gonna stick with Sunrun. And if it doesn't happen, I can always call you again."

Bright Planet got it taken care of some time toward the end of March. Since March, I have been paying Sunrun a dollar a month. I've been getting billed by PG&E for their office accounting, establishing the net meter and their readings. So, that's about $6 a month to pay to PG&E and if I'm counting back, if they said that they covered April, May, June, July, August maybe, and then September, then by October, we'll be paying our agreed upon $82 monthly throughout the end of the contract with them. 82 is a whole lot better than seeing a summer bill of 175 and crawling upwards of what it was like last summer. It was awful last summer and it was very hard to make those payments on our income.

We did not have the battery offered to us at the time. In the extended year of wait period, they were finally able to become competitive and begin a new package like that for newer customers. When I saw that, I called them and I asked them about it. I wrote to them as well asking that I'd be put on the list for when they could begin a retro fit and a backup battery. The last I heard was they didn't think they were going to be able to offer that to us because at that point, PG&E was not going to approve that. Evidently, they're losing out too much on their income from the off peak-hours that we're getting charged. So if they can work that out, I do want to get the backup battery. As the way things worked along with us, it's been a fine plan. We've gotten what we needed when we needed it and we're happy.

Sunrun's communication was good. But it could have been better. I sat down with the sales rep back in March of 2022. She probably didn't know all the specifics. But I was under the impression at the end of March of 2022 that the installation process would have occurred a bit more rapidly. And there was a lack of communication on as to far as when all this would happen. From signing the contract in the early part of March of 2022 to having a fully functional system at the end of August of 2022, it took longer than what I expected.

The crews that came out to install the system were good. We didn't get the initial installation until July. They came out, put the panels on and put everything that they could together. The inverter was not available until a month later. Another crew came out and finished the installation. And that was at the first part of August. And it kind sat there for three weeks until Xcel decided to make an appearance.

I understand that there are delays with permitting and with supply chain issues etc. But a bit more detailed communication and say, "Hey, we got your contract. We got this. Don't expect anything for three months. We're not gonna be scheduling things out for three months." The next week, one of their planning guys showed up to do a house inspection to make sure that the roof was capable of carrying the load, that the electrical service was would be adequate. So I figured, "That was pretty quick." The guy was out here the next week. But after that, things dropped off and I didn't hear anything until the project manager called me in June and said, "Will July 8th work?" And I said, "Well, I guess so."

The system was designed to produce so much power and that Sunrun guarantees that their system will produce that. That's not gonna happen until August of this year to see in fact if their production estimate is gonna actually be accurate. But they sent out these little maintenance tips. It says, “When your panels get dirty, spray them off with water from the ground. We really don't want you going up on the roof and endangering yourself and everything,” which is good advice. But they did not mention snow removal. We'll get more snow than typical in Denver. Also, it has been sticking around longer than it usually does.

I purchased a Poly snow rake basically because I'm not gonna get up on the roof with snow on it. It snowed in December 28th and it snowed here about a foot. And for 10 days there, there was no production for me because there's no sunlight to get through the snow. I'm now able to clean those panels off from the ground, so I'm not endangering myself. But that works well. Maybe mentioning that in their maintenance brochure may be helpful. As soon as I cleared the snow off the panels, they started producing again. So, we're still good.

I've recommended Sunrun to several people. I have two daughters and I showed them my electric bill after the installation was complete. They were shocked. I also recommended it to the neighbor across the street. She came over and asked how it was working. Also, my stepson was in from Florida, and he asked if Sunrun operated in Florida. And I found out that they did. So, I sent him the contact information.

For the original installation, we needed to get a roof as well. So, part of Sunrun that I also liked was they had a roofing company attached to them when they took over. I liked the idea that you have one place where you could hold someone accountable and responsible. The tough part about it was, to get the roof installed, I had to go through my homeowners' association, which has nothing to do with Sunrun, but that was very frustrating. I finally got that all approved, but then it still took six weeks after that to get the roofing done.

When the installation of the solar came on, they destroyed the new roof and broke the new roof. So, we had to get the secondary roof installed, which was very frustrating. The saddest part of all was, for the first installation, I paid for my family, to get out of here, knowing how bad and funky it was going to be. That was a couple of thousand bucks out of my pocket just to get them out so we didn't have to deal with that. But then, they had to deal with it the second time around, which I appreciate Sunrun saying, "We knew we're the ones that screwed it up. We'll cover this cost, all of that." But to me, it would be the waste factor and the timing factor that was very disturbing.

They had great installers. I enjoyed the original roofing people and the secondary roofing people, yet we found nails and broken tiles for weeks throughout the garden. Some of the plants got squished too. Then, after all of that, they installed two-thirds of the solar before they had to leave to work on other projects. And it was my continuous follow-up, till we finally got someone to come back out again to put the rest of the solar panels on. It was a full year after we signed the contract before we got solar.

I did not even get the answers that I had requested to know how to use Tesla's power cells until just two weeks ago and just kept being referred to other people. I finally got referred to Tesla themselves and that actually has been my best call. But I appreciate my sales rep, who unfortunately is no longer with the company. His follow-up was amazing. He was the one that kept me in the loop. Even though he was on medical leave, he would still call me or text me.

The crew that installed the system was fantastic. They were in and out in less than half a day. The sales rep was great, too. They were very informative. She answered all my questions. The app has been great. As far as maintenance, you just have to clean the panels. Otherwise, you lose efficiency. You lose about 15% efficiency if you don't wash them. As long as you're getting a lot of rain, you're fine.