Westhaven Power Reviews

About a week ago, we got another leak, and instead of coming to fix it, they said because we were past our 3 year warranty they were no longer "responsible" for repairing the problem THEY caused. This feels entirely unethical. The emotional stress that this problem has caused us has made the solar panels completely not worth it. The right thing to do would have been to find the root cause of the issue and repair it the first time, instead of insufficiently repairing it several times. The front end customer service is friendly, but the service department seems to lack compassion or a sense of responsibility. Find your solar panels elsewhere.

Westhaven has some great sales personnel – they were great to promise all the wonder things they could offer – a lifetime partnership with the equipment, when I asked if I could add more panels in than they and other companies had determined they didn’t blink an eye to accommodate. 25-year warranty on the panel & microprocessor pieces, 10 year warranty on the system. The best panels and inverters around, no one better! They will show you your ROI – should have been 7-8 years and boom all savings then on! All great!!! …. Well…

Installation was an interesting task. The crew was friendly and the foreman was respectful, but he had no managerial skill to run a crew and unfortunately watched him get walked all over. Lots of small issues arose during this time - they set all the gear in the driveway which began to sink into the asphalt. Bummer, but they brought in some cold patch to fix it. Then for “safety” they will install anchor devices into your roof opposite the installation area (granted they didn’t tie off one time during construction that I observed) but when they are done they patched with white caulking on a reddish brown roof… Okay maybe you can hide it some by covering the wet caulk with some swept up grit from the roof (not a major issue I know, but again a lack of pride and consideration of your customer).

The next concern is the anchoring of the brackets on the roof – multiple blowouts during the installation and no repairs. “hey it's under the eaves, no risk”… Not what you would hope to be left with following a $40K price tag, getting to look at splintered rafters and exposed lag bolts. A bit of measuring, perhaps a counter drilling first from beneath and marking the location of the studs might help but if pride is not a concern in construction then leaving these will be okay. The foreman asked if I had any paint so that he could have it matched for making repairs and then proceeded to just use my paint (and left the can improperly closed so it dried up shortly after). The system went operational in September –the lights were indicating, and the unit was producing - but there were a number of issues with the setup. The monitoring system was not reading correctly, the POE was inoperable - and the customer left to fight to get things working.

Westhaven’s warranty: “Warranties. Contractor warrants to Owner that all materials and equipment furnished shall be new, free from faults and defects and of good quality. Contractor hereby warrants its work against all deficiencies and defects for the period of ten (10) years. Said warranty shall begin from the date of completion of that work.”

How would a customer read that? Seems like a great pitch, they are with you to ensure your system is top notch. When the installer has issues with the equipment manufacturer though they will not tell you that they are no longer supporting the systems (there was a lengthy issue between Sunpower and Westhaven – and the installer will tell you one story while the OEM tells you another) but regardless you get left with a lack of support for the product you were sold. They are not going to tell you as a customer that they are no longer supporting the Sunpower systems they sold less than 2 years prior, nor will you know later that they resolved the differences and work on the system again.

Westhaven Service Department: The system was plagued with defects – Frozen PV5 issues with connectivity generating months of no data, inability of the system to communicate via their provided powerline adapter, an initial failed set of microinverters that had to be replaced by another company due to Westhaven / Sunpower not working together, the system needing to be recommissioned early on. Once your check is cashed they are not worried about you as customer.

Last year after months of working with the manufacturer trying to get resolution to panels under producing, failing to produce at all or issues with the system not communicating any of the production I was finally told to go back to the installer – this was a bit of a shock given last I was aware as a customer the installer was not supporting Sunpower equipment anymore… So I reached out to Westhaven and started over explaining the issues with the system. “William” continued to tell me that the system was working and therefore not an issue, but if I wanted to have the system checked I would need to pay Westhaven a $200 service fee…

Again frustrating because the manufacturer knows there are issues but then refuses to act on it, and the installer is claiming that the system is operating normally – William even tried to send me numbers showing that it was working, yet failing to understand the output was significantly reduced from the capacity and historical values that it could be shown able to produce. No matter the data he could not comprehend that of 32 panels there were a portion producing little or nothing, another portion doing half that which they should – even when compared side by side to the group of panels which still appear to produce normally. Anyways it took me a while to get pissed enough to agree to pay the company…

I went back to Westhaven a number of months later again hammering on the issues the system is indicating – William takes the information and tells me he will call me back after discussing internally. No phone call, no email, but I do find that I have a service appointment created to have the technician onsite. Westhaven’s service appointments are always about 30 days out, not so ideal but you will come to understand why when you learn that they only have a single service technician. My appointment is “scheduled” for 8am, I’ve taken the day off of work to be able to accommodate this. At 8:15 I get an update from the technician that he will be onsite between 1pm and 3pm. I wrote the service coordinator William back to express more of my frustration, 3 hours later he writes me back to say apologize but they will be there.

Around 1:30 in the afternoon the technician Daniel shows up on the jobsite, and after our introductions I find he has been given zero detail regarding the issues with the system other than “low production”… Being mildly organized I pulled the spreadsheet out showing a list of panels which indicate low / no production. It takes Daniel only a few moments to realize that the system has multiple issues and that he will need to begin making checks – verifying the monitoring system output compared to PGE’s meter (these are fine), then coming to the conclusion that panels need to be tested but that he does not have the time to complete these checks as his workday hours are at an end…

Frustrating that you would send a technician to troubleshoot a system without adequate information, without a plan of what needs completed and without adequate time to assess and be able to do any reasonable inspection (cycling power had been attempted multiple times already, and there was barely enough time to do that). Daniel explained that he would have to need another Westhaven employee to assist him, because in order to check the panels that were producing inadequately they would have to disassemble the array which would take many hours.

So the next day I get another email stating I had an appointment in a months' time. The day before the appointment I get another email appointment for another month out - confused I then called Westhaven to enquire what was happening, and the reply was that the appointment was changed because a second technician wasn't available. Horrible communication... I asked again if we would be looking at all of the panels that were failing to produce as they were only concerned with ~6 panels, yet 16 of the 32 panels were indicating low or no production - and received no answer.

Another month passes and Daniel is back this time with a friend - I assisted in the panel removal and reinstallation, the map of the layout was not correct and it was a big job (which they knew about before hand and still quote as a $200 visit, yet they had to pull panels and check individually in order to find the suspect panels). Paying Westhaven more money for troubleshooting a system that has been a lemon since the beginning hurts, they lack any ability to plan a job and use their time wisely. I asked why we were not checking all the panels and Daniel made some calls, I certainly added additional time in this request although every panel had to be lifted in order to locate serials regardless.

Take some time and read other reviews from folks who have had issues – check the BBB, SolarReview, Yelp, Google & more. Many are initially happy with the work, but as many others and myself have found this company could care less about you once you have signed the contract, their commitment ends and if you are in the unfortunate situation where the installation is incomplete and poor practices followed - you will be left frustrated. Tracy will pat himself and the company on the back about how many systems they have fixed and how they are better than any other company around, meanwhile you are left with a broken system and a shrug of the shoulders with not even a recommendation of resolution.

He can write a nice email, he will avoid direct communication (even you specifically tell the technician you want to be contacted immediately, only when you threaten to withhold payment will he be bothered) and you will continue to be out of pocket and without a working system. But they really do care about your satisfaction – they will tell you that time and time again, even when your investment continues to produce less than half of the specification.

It makes me ill to consider I have paid them $41k for to poorly install this garbage system, paid them $1400 to “troubleshoot” a system that monitoring easily showed does not and has not produced for years, spent an additional $2k to the power company this year due to a failed system, lost income for multiple days of taking off of work to support their service windows and I dare say spent over 40 hours of my own time troubleshooting & communicating (pleading may better describe this) with the manufacturer & installer how the system fails to operate. Chose wisely.