Sunrun Reviews

On the other hand, a number of my neighbors have also installed solar panels and they have their batteries stored in a garage. How other companies could install batteries inside the garage in my neighborhood and Sunrun could not is something that still is a question for me. When they said that the city is not allowing installing batteries inside the garage, I took that. This may make sense because it may be a safety issue. Maybe it's a fire issue because battery is something loaded with all kinds of energy storage and sometimes, batteries can heat up and explode and be a higher fire hazard. Maybe that is the case. And I was making up reasons to convince myself that what Sunrun is telling me is making sense.

But as I saw the others installing batteries inside their garages, I thought about how sincere Sunrun’s feedback was and how solid the reasoning for that was. You can be cynical and say that at that time, Sunrun did not have enough batteries in their stock and they just wanted to just weasel out. Or installing a battery did not make financial sense to someone at that point. And therefore, they just moved my project forward by giving me a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Maybe someday, somebody will help me understand that.

The price of the batteries was approximately $10,000. The cost of everything is going up and will keep going up. Maybe the competition will drive the cost of the battery down. But on the other hand, with all the EVs and the additional need for storage of electrical power, it's very likely that the cost of the battery will go up rather than down. So, even if Sunrun comes back to me and says they’re ready to put a battery inside our garage, I'm gonna be paying a high price for that because of the cost difference between 2023 and hypothetically 2025.

We just have the panels and it's connected to the network and they don't pay a lot for that. So, we are producing energy and sending it to the network for a lower price. And we're getting them for a higher price from the network. We have no storage capacity so, we're at their mercy. When you have storage, it will reduce the dependence on the higher-cost electrical power that you're receiving from them. But overall, Sunrun did well. The product is great and everything seems to be functioning well. I hope it will be functioning the same in the future, at least for some time. I have the app and I don't do that regularly but once in a while, I go to it. In Southern California, we have months of May and June overcast. So, we don't have a whole lot of sunshine until later on in the day, and that piqued my curiosity to see if the system is producing or not. I go to it and when I do, I see how much we're producing, which is good and it is all I need.

There were some surprise costs that I didn't anticipate. I had to do some work on my roof because it wasn't up to the code for the solar panels, but I understand that happens. I had to redo part of my roof because it wasn't good enough to support the panels. We wanted to have enough panels that I wouldn't be paying anything out of pocket for electricity. So, we fudged it on the side of like it generating more than I used. The results have been fine. Sunrun has been responsible. To some extent, you gotta deal with Sunrun and you gotta also deal with your utility, which is LADWP. So at one point, Sunrun would be done, but LADWP wasn't ready. Then it took them about a month to certify it. I understand everybody has those issues. I haven't talked to anybody that didn't have those issues.

Then my meter went bad in January of '23 and for about a month, DWP couldn't tell how much I was generating. That was actually on them. Other than that, they've been very responsive. There's been a couple of times where I had issues. When I called them, I got through to them right away. They do send people out really quickly. Initially, I wasn't very happy with them because it seemed like they had forgotten about me but once they got that part fixed up, it was okay. And since then, everything's been okay.

I don't pay anything for electricity. There's a bank of money that goes up every month where I'm generating more electricity than I'm using. And even though I don't get cash for that, that would count against any month where if I somehow used more electricity than I generated. So if it was a really cloudy month, I would have a bank against that. I haven't had any problem with outages. I do have a backup battery, but I haven't had enough power outages just to even know how that works. Sunrun is a good company to work with. They're a big company and they're located out of state, but they're still responsive. They deal with local contractors for the installation. The biggest issue with solar is just the rules with the California Public Utilities Commission. They keep changing. So, you do have to do your due diligence. The rules today are not the same as the rules when I bought my system.

I don't have any friends or neighbors that have solar electricity so, there's nobody to ask about it on my side that would be completely independent. But that doesn't bother me. I don't get an electric bill. I pay for the lease on the solar panels and I know what the increase in that is gonna be every year. I haven't ever seen another electric bill since we converted, so I have to be happy. But I have an app on my phone and the information about the system is readily available. They're giving you statistics of what you're saving by doing this and it all looks good.

I had talked to different people over the years and I could just see how the industry was changing. So, things were getting a little more expensive when you waited. If I had gone a couple of years ago, it might’ve been cheaper, but I don't know what the deals would have been. So, it's hard to know for sure. But it can't hurt to check with other people. If people have friends that have it, certainly check with them. I know somebody recently in Holbrook started going solar and a couple of people threw some information out. So, I threw out Sunrun and mentioned how I've been happy with my experience. I'm willing to talk to people. It is just a scary place to go but you see it's coming fast.

We had already talked it through a couple of times over about five years. We've talked about wanting to do it. So, when he was saying exactly what we were hoping for, including the battery, we knew this was for us. There were lots of stages in getting the solar panels on the house, lots of permits and interactions, and Sunrun would send us texts, emails, and phone calls of reminders of appointments, who would be coming, and what to look for. I couldn't believe the customer service. These days, it really stood out. They were stellar.

As far as the installation, there were steps and waiting for permits and preparation. They waited for the paint to dry before they would sign off and leave. The product is first quality. They redesigned my mom and dad's electrical panel and beefed it up so they could withstand the wattage generated by the solar panels. These guys were pros. They didn't mean to be super fast, but they were lightning fast. They came early. They sang while they worked. This company is special. They would knock before they left and they said, "Would you like to see what we've done? We're all done for the day. Thank you, Mrs. **." They were super polite. We'd offer them sodas, and they were like, "No." A couple of them worked while it was over 100 degrees and they were still happy. We were super impressed.

I friended Johannes on Facebook so when people got on the local Facebook page and said, "Whose services? Who takes care of your solar?" I would tag Johannes on there and say, "This is what you want right here. Right here, this is what you want." They threw in a free electronic vehicle charger that was free. They put that in the garage, which upped our house value and we've got solar. The whole deal made the house, this property, go up in value. That's what Sunrun did for us. We're very pleased with them.

When I got the bills, I didn't understand why I was behind on one of my bills. It’s automatic and he said they were two different bills because they can't bundle them. He never told me that upfront. I probably still would have gotten it but I would have known about it. I had already purchased a Tesla so it wouldn't have made much of a difference on that but the salesman never said it was the only way they could do it. I told him and he said he did. I know he didn't because it was three months and I was calling accounting and I was told what happened. But I am happy with the service with Sunrun. It has nothing to do with the salesman. He wasn't the same one from the year before. If you don't ask, they won't tell you certain things and he thought maybe I wouldn't get Sunrun for panels. But I was still gonna get them because I have the vehicle.

I see what the Tesla costs to charge every night because I use it every day. But I'm under and still have a credit with STG. So, it's not like I go above and beyond and try to use as much current as I can because I have panels. It's still my wife and myself, so we're still under but I'm fine with that. I'm very satisfied with the service and it was just that part that the salesman said he was sure he told me.

I'm in San Diego County and my aunt who I lived with for 15 years lives in Cucamonga. I called Sunrun and they referred me to a different salesman out in Cucamonga. So, he went out and did the estimate on my aunt’s house and everything was ready to go. That was six months ago. They did all the work. But two weeks ago, the salesman came back and told her she has to pay $2,300 because they screwed up on the estimate that they have to do something with the existing electrical panels and there's a charge. My aunt is on social security so she's tight with her budget. So I talked to him and I said I had them do my service and my neighbors too. But now they’re telling me it's $2,300 for them to finish my aunt’s. She doesn't have the money. He said he was gonna call Sunrun and see what he could do so she wouldn't have to pay. He told me he screwed up. He should have told her but he didn't.

It was the salesman and Sunrun who got lost somehow on that extra charge. But so far, they haven't hooked it up. He hasn't called me back to see what the deal is. This was Tuesday of last week and we're just waiting on him to see what he's gonna say. There's no way my aunt can pay it even if it's payments because she's just trapped. It's a four-bedroom house and her husband died. It was a slip-up. But besides that, everything's fine. I live on a cul-de-sac so it's hard because I don't know the other neighbors that live up the street. But any chance I can, I'm always telling them to go to Sunrun. They can't go wrong. The guys that came out did all the service. They painted all the tubing and the conduit. Everything was nice and they didn't cut any corners. It's perfect.

After that I had problems with flickering lights that I didn't realize was caused by the solar panels. 6 months ago the electricity was going off and on in the kitchen so I called an electrician who told me to call PG&E. First PG&E came out and shut off my power. He pulled off breakers and showed me that the panel was burnt behind them. He said this would have taken over 3 years to develop and that I needed a new panel. The electrician came out and said the same thing. The only thing I had changed in that time frame was to add the solar panels.

I contacted Costco who put me in touch with Sunrun's insurance company. After sending them everything they kept asking for more things without being specific about what they wanted. I would have called the electrician back out if they had been specific but that costs money and they weren't being specific or offering to pay for that. After going back and forth for 6 months they denied my claim. I now have to take my complaint back to Costco. If you're looking for solar, I would definitely not recommend Sunrun.

Now, neither my wife nor I have that great of credit history so, needless to say when Sunrun ran our credits they declined us taking over the contract (mind you we were paying $500,000 CASH at this time and despite our credit ratings we have 4 times that in our bank accounts and we both have good jobs as well)... But, Sunrun Said that if we paid the contract two years in advance they would ok us taking over the contract and we would have our first two years of solar paid up front and we could start paying the $140 a month after the credits from two years we paid upfront ran out, but we also had to set up an automatic payment right away that would start again after the first two years was over,,,

So, we gave them something like $3,500 and set up the payment arrangement to began two years from August 2024, so August of 2026 should have been our first payment, but it is the end of November 2024 and so far Sunrun has pulled 4 payments from our checking account and has also pulled from our prepaid account with them... So, each damn month these jokers have double charged us $140 and $140 and they have lied to my wife and myself over the phone telling us that they were, at that every moment sending our money back to our checking account, which has yet to happen even once in 8 to 12 attempts on our part to call them and get this problem rectified...

All that and we still have had a electric bill between $240 and $450 each month and we really don't use very much electricity, definitely not enough to constitute a bill ranging between $520 and $730 dollars a freaking month!!! I was under the impression that solar was going to save us money each month, not double our bill and waste our valuable!!! WHAT A JOKE THIS PLACE IS!!!

We have had a couple support cases opened on this bait-and-switch of leases, but their support team is unwilling to help us. The solar system appears to be working fine, but we are exceptionally frustrated by the company's tactics of fraudulently gaining our business. Hard to tell if this situation is a paperwork mistake, or a nefarious tactic. But the company's unwillingness to solve the situation leads me to believe the latter.