Sunrun

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, as a company, is okay. But I do have some annoying issues that I haven't been able to get them to resolve yet. They're mounting the panels to the roof and you got bolts in your beams. During the daytime, it will periodically knock. It's a little annoying. Sometimes, I hear it then I have to think about a second what that was. I went back and forth with Sunrun and took pictures, video and sound recordings. Also, I would ask them about the mobile app and they said to go to their website and I can view all the stat.

According to the math, it's gonna take about 10 years for the system to pay for itself and that's helped by our tax rebate and Costco putting in their rebates. That's still not looking at whatever maintenance that we may still need to do. I live in Texas and Texas is hard on roofs so roofs need to be replaced from time to time. It's not that I'm expecting that the panels need to be replaced because of hail but I'm expecting since 100% of the roof is not covered with panels, I will still, potentially, have on the other side of the roof different parts that I need to replace. I don't know what it's going to cost to have someone come out, take the panels off, have the roofers come and replace the roof and that's going to push the payback further. But Sunrun did help. If I had to do it all over again, I'd probably do exactly the same thing.

The one representative I spoke with, Danny, seemed to meet all the issues I was looking for. He was very knowledgeable and personable. He came out and met with me personally when he didn't have to because of the whole stuff going on with covid. We had a representative come out and did aerial photos of our house first. They inspected the roof, the location where the unit was going to be going and our electrical panel. After they had done that, they went back to their offices and came up with the install plan that they were going to proceed with. They ran it by me and got my approval on it. After that, they ran it through the city and got the approvals for doing the install on our home through the city inspectors. Once permit was obtained, they set up the installation date with us prior. They gave us a two-week notice. They arrived, did the install and did a pretty professional job on it.

Going solar, we're able to keep our house cooler which is nice. We are definitely seeing the savings because our electric bill, normally, during this time of year, would be close to $400, and right now, we're just paying a constant price of $130. The only thing that we do have downside of it is we are wanting to get the battery as well and we have not gotten it yet. When we first were looking at it, we didn't think that we'd want the battery, but we decided that we wanted it. But since we'd already paid or signed our docs, we're no longer considered a new customer. We were considered existing customers so the deals that they had for new customers did not apply to us.

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.