Sunrun

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.

The install itself went really fast and everybody on the team was super nice. They gave me a lot of information as well. It took a bit of time to get up and running with utilities though. After I got installed, my system was not working for over a month. It worked for one day then I had nothing on the app. I contacted Sunrun and discovered it's a little hard to deal with customer service. There's a lot of different departments, and I kept getting shuffled between them. It took a month and a week after I initially contacted and told them what was wrong. They got a tech out pretty fast to look at my system, and the tech said, “Oh, nothing's wrong with your system. There's something wrong with the app itself. And your system is connected possibly with the wrong app.”

It was a month and a week after that tech left before they fixed the thing on my app. Nobody contacted me or followed up with me. The app just started working one day, and I contacted Sunrun a few times before that. Everybody I spoke to was very friendly, but every time I contacted them, they said, “Well, it's being looked over by that department and they're going to get to it. It's just taking a little bit of time.” It was a lot of time in which things weren't going well though. Even though they're very nice, they're not able to fulfill the technical side of their job as well as I would like. However, everything is straightened out now. I've had access to the app for two weeks where it's been showing me updated information on my system, and everything has been corrected.

The sales portion was one of the most pleasant sales experiences I've ever had when dealing with a company with updates. I'm also very pleased to have solar. I'm looking forward to what that's going to do with my billing in the future. I was told that Sunrun has a department that allows upgrades later on, so I feel satisfied with the fact that I'm going to be able to get the system updated with what I need. Because when it comes to the installation side of things, they're great.

I appreciated the sales rep that Sunrun had because he answered all my questions. I told him I probably had more, and he said, “Bring it.” He was outstanding. Unfortunately, he doesn't work for Sunrun anymore, but the guy who took over for him was pretty good too. I had a bit of bad experience in the installation part, but it worked out. It wasn’t all Sunrun’s fault. I have a townhouse, and when the installers came in, they went on the roof and drilled a hole in the neighbor's roof. Based on the plan, they said the design wasn't quite right, so they said I had options. They could make an adjustment there, or they could go back to the engineers and let the engineers really look at it. I went back to the engineers, and it took them almost a month to come back out to do the reinstall.

They were supposed to get it installed before the beginning of the summer. It didn't get installed till the middle of the fall, but that was partially because my HOA was dragging their feet about giving approval. There was that in the scheduling, but Sunrun also had to reschedule another crew to come out to put it in. It was a little more than 30 days. They did a nice job though. They did it pretty fast then there was the time between once they installed it, they had to come in and get approval from the county. That took a little while too. So from the time the system got installed till the time it was turned on to use, it took a little time and I wasn't happy about that.

I've received two bills with a little confusion as well. Their bill was approximately what they said it was going to be, but the electric company’s bill seemed a little high. One was 50 something, and the other was 70 something. My understanding is that I should only be getting a connection bill from the electric company. I was gonna make a call, try to see if I could find out what that's about, but I want to see what the next electric bill looks like.

My whole experience with Sunrun was great. Everybody's been happy and very polite. They’re great people. I also get nice emails all the time. This is the first time I’ve ever had solar, and one question I forgot to ask was how to clean my panels. Three weeks ago, I got, “This is how you clean your panels.” They also offered us money if we recommended them, which we have. Friends of ours are getting the same thing we have. We live in a rural area, and when we get monsoon season, we always lose electricity, so everybody up here wants battery backups.

We're leasing the system, so we're paying a bit more than my highest electricity bill that I've ever had. I wanted it for when our electricity goes out. We live up in hunting country where everybody hunts, and we lose electricity, which happens every year, about seven times a year for 20 hours. We've got elk in our freezers and I don't want to lose all that meat. I want my freezers to keep running when we have no electricity. That’s the reason why I wanted the system. My well always runs and my air conditioner runs as well.

My cousin lives down in Peoria, Arizona. He doesn't have the battery backup, and he saves a lot of money. Having a battery backup, I'm gonna save more money because I'm producing my own electricity, and right now, it's a nice, sunny day. It’s not hot, and I can go out in my garage and my battery's charging and producing electricity for my house. I'm not charging off of aps. I’m perfectly happy with the system so far, but I haven't gotten a bill from Sunrun or aps yet. I understood, the first month or two, they have to adjust with the previously owed bill, but I haven’t received anything from Sunrun yet about a bill. I don’t have good internet service out here, so I prefer a paper bill.

And as far as with the breakdown of the pricing, the number the rep kept giving me which interested me was, “With everything, it's gonna be 140 bucks a month for your electric bill.” I don't know if he meant that that was an average over the year. So, if my panels aren't making power and they're covered in snow, I'm not saving any on my electric bill.

In December, my bill was 92 bucks. In the wintertime, it's normally 150. The big thing for me is in the summer. When I'm running my air conditioners or I'm running my pool pump, my bill is normally 350. So, in the summer, if it's only gonna be 100 bucks, that's fine. But the thing is the rep just kept telling me that my bill would be $140 a month. Maybe I didn't read the print fully where it said, “Hey, if your panels are covered, you're not making power. You're not deducting energy from your electric bill.”

My last electric bill was 450 bucks for the month, because I was under the impression that I can go ahead and plug in my electric heater so I can heat my woodshop. I was doing a bunch of work. And my panels were covered in snow. Now, my bill is outrageous. It's double what it normally is. So, I was pissed about that.

The rep made some promises to me and he hasn't followed through with that, so I tried to contact them yesterday. And to their understanding and on my account, the promises he made to me have yet to be documented. So, that didn't go over too well with me either. And when I called him yesterday, he told me he was in a meeting and he would call me right back. But he never did. His voicemail is full, so I can't leave him a voicemail. And he only seems to respond to me when he wants to.

I use Sunrun's app to see when I'm making power. One of the other issues I had is that my internet went down and I had to switch out routers. And when I did, it disconnected my panels. So, my panels weren't communicating with Sunrun. And I had no idea about it. Sunrun figured it out and called me 30 days later. So, there was another hiccup in the system because they had to come out and reconnect my Wi-Fi to the system.

I've had a good experience with Sunrun. The guys who came and installed those stuff were great. They did it in a timely manner. They were clean and were respectful. They did a great job. I referred Sunrun to a couple of people. One of my friends is going through with an install in the spring. So, I was, “Oh, that was nice to see.” The other thing is that my contact who essentially pitched me the whole thing said, “Being that you’re gonna get $1,500 incentive for going through with all this stuff.” The way he made it out to be is I would receive two prepaid credit cards for the amount of $1,500. I have yet to see those. And there's nothing on my account that even says that that's going to happen. That is what annoys me about the whole situation. I was after just the aspect of saving money on my electric bill. And I like the fact that I didn't have to shell out 30 grand for all these panels. That was the big thing for me.

You can go online and they show you a daily information. My issue was, from the time they installed it to the time my local township approved it, I lost the whole summer when I would have got the most benefit out of it. My electricity bill is way down. The system's working but it's not producing enough to overcome what the house uses because it's wintertime and there's no sun.

I have a $5,000 Edison bill and I am still paying for my solar panels because they refused to help. Their reason being that we should have checked the equipment. We had so many people come and go. One of the guys came on Saturday morning. He was a trainee. I overheard them telling him what to do. With that being said, the last people that came out was because we had to add additional panels because the original ones weren't producing enough.