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.

We had one small glitch when Sunrun installed and then, we had to get the village out for the final inspection. It didn't pass. Sunrun came out right away and fixed it. They needed to ground to the water supply and that wasn't done. They said they would come out and set it up. It was Labor Day and I asked if they were going to send a crew out. The girl called me back and said that the installers said they would be out but they never showed up. I called and said that I was at work and they set it up for a couple of days later and gave me $100 because I would have worked Labor Day otherwise, and made the extra money. Sunrun compensated and took care of everything.

I feel fantastic and I love getting this $14 ComEd bill. My brother is very much into solar energy and green, and he went out and checked everything. He said that Sunrun did a nice job. My niece's boyfriend installs solar so he checked everything out and said too that it was nice. I give Sunrun’s name out to everybody. I had several people from work ask me about it and I said that it’s still new for me and we’ll wait and see how it does as we progress. I'd gone through two electric bills and I've already got solar and the kilowatts rolling, and I haven't used as much as I've produced. ComEd’s delivery fee comes to $14.34 and that's all my electric bill has been.

It’s winter and right about now, we would be under a lot of snow. I'm still producing a lot of solar although I've had a couple of days where it was one or two kilowatts. For the most part, even with the shortened days, I've been producing 25 kilowatts a day. We haven't had any snow and the weather has been quite cooperative. Once the snow hits, the kilowatts are gonna drop but I'm expecting that. The only thing is that I was hoping the solar would all be up and running quicker than it was. But it was not by any fault of Sunrun. It takes time to get the inspectors out and get the permits. But if we had gotten it up and running earlier, I would've hit a lot of that heavy duty summer months, where there are tons of sun. So I'm curious for next summer to see where it goes.

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.

I submitted multiple service requests for Sunrun to come remove the panels so the roofing company could replace my roof. Without any timely responses from Sunrun, I had to outsource a local solar company (Son Energy Systems) (fantastic company) to remove the panels so the new roof could be installed. This situation is still not resolved. I would highly recommend solar. It is a very efficient and clean energy source. But I would NOT recommend Sunrun for the installation or services.

The guy that I worked with was extremely nice, very knowledgeable. And he wasn’t a pushy salesman. He just gave me the facts and it just sold itself. The other companies that I worked with were terrible when it comes to being pushy. Every other company was, “You need a battery. There's no point of going solar without a battery.” And based on what I read, that's not true in our situation. And when I asked the guy about it, he said, “Absolutely not. I wouldn't recommend that you spend an extra $10,000 on a battery that you're not going to use.” So, I appreciated that. That sold it for me.

The transistors that Sunrun uses are compatible with some of the newer technology that's going to come out. However, their app is not the best. I would hope that they would push an upgrade sooner than later. I have foreseen that being an issue based on the reviews of the app. But the benefits about saving money and the look of the solar panels outweigh the app.