Sunrun

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.

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.

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.

Sunrun's own records prove that I didn't even have a meter for months that I was billed. Sunrun's error caused additional fees to be charged against my bank account. I am highly disappointed to be contracted with this company and would like to warn others that should you have an issue, it will be very difficult to receive help. Do yourself a favor and choose another servicer. My experience with Sunrun has been disappointing, stressful and time consuming.

I have since then had local roofing companies do an inspection and they all say the same thing 15 to 18 years old minimum. I have simply asked that they pay to remove it so we can install a new roof but has declined to help. So I am now hiring an Attorney to fight tooth and nail not only to have the whole system removed but to pay for the damages to the walls from the leaky roof, to the black mold behind the drywall that has caused severe illness in my 5-year-old at the time of the leaks, to all the overage I have been paying to the electric company since I started this whole fiasco. PLEASE DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY TO SAVE YOUR LIFE. THEY ARE CROOKS.