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I've been coming here on and off for the past couple of years.. at least 1.5 years. It was a great resource to read about the process of other members getting on board with solar systems.
However, recently, it seems there's not very much content regarding quotes, the sales process, and just general happiness or dissatisfaction with specific installers. I realize we now have Solarreviews.com. But it offers somewhat of a different "feel" than what I was getting out of the more traditional open-forum such as what we have here. A review site is just generally more "one sided", if you know what I mean.
In any case, back when PMs were heavily utilized, I was able to get a couple of good referrals from some members here (thanks, guys). Generally speaking, those referrals have been great (LA Solar Group and Advanced Improvements). But aside from these 2, I seemed to have run out of installers to call. Although I could make a decision at this point, I'd really feel better if I had at least 5 comparable quotes from decent installers to compare with. Its also educational for me to see how each installer designs the system and with what equipment.
I turned to Yelp and my general feeling is, Yelp just attracts a different crowd. People that write glowing reviews may very well be quite happy with the whole process and what they paid and what equipment was used. But at the same time, they may not care what equipment was used, they never monitored the installation, and their roof just hasnt started leaking yet. Solarreview does seem to be more of the crowd I'm looking for, but until it gets more "populated", its of limited use. Its also a little discouraging to see, in some cases, a wide variance between the number of stars at one place and a very different number of stars in another (5 stars vs 3 stars for the same installer? hmm..)
Anyhow, with the change in forum rules, I was hoping people who had a system installed in Southern California can chime in with recommendations on who I should call to get quotes from. We can keep it positive. I believe as long as we follow the forum rules and not link to any installers website, we should be OK? (we CAN link to their www.solarreviews.com page if they have one?).
For what its worth, I'm looking for a system in the 5.5-6kw range. I'm southeast facing with limited roof space (hence the 5.5-6kw). My annual usage is around 9000kwh (but I'd like to use more, AC/EV, etc). I have limited shading issues (chimney shade in the afternoon).
LA Solar thinks I can only fit 15 Suniva 335W panels on the roof. Advanced Improvements thinks they can fit at least 17 LG 320W panels on the roof since they're smaller. LA Solar quoted SolarEdge with optimizers and Advanced Improvements is on board with Enphase S280 micro-inverters.
Anyway, as I said, hopefully we're not breakiing any forum rules. But I'm just hoping we can get back some of the discussion about specific installers and people who had good experiences with them.
However, recently, it seems there's not very much content regarding quotes, the sales process, and just general happiness or dissatisfaction with specific installers. I realize we now have Solarreviews.com. But it offers somewhat of a different "feel" than what I was getting out of the more traditional open-forum such as what we have here. A review site is just generally more "one sided", if you know what I mean.
In any case, back when PMs were heavily utilized, I was able to get a couple of good referrals from some members here (thanks, guys). Generally speaking, those referrals have been great (LA Solar Group and Advanced Improvements). But aside from these 2, I seemed to have run out of installers to call. Although I could make a decision at this point, I'd really feel better if I had at least 5 comparable quotes from decent installers to compare with. Its also educational for me to see how each installer designs the system and with what equipment.
I turned to Yelp and my general feeling is, Yelp just attracts a different crowd. People that write glowing reviews may very well be quite happy with the whole process and what they paid and what equipment was used. But at the same time, they may not care what equipment was used, they never monitored the installation, and their roof just hasnt started leaking yet. Solarreview does seem to be more of the crowd I'm looking for, but until it gets more "populated", its of limited use. Its also a little discouraging to see, in some cases, a wide variance between the number of stars at one place and a very different number of stars in another (5 stars vs 3 stars for the same installer? hmm..)
Anyhow, with the change in forum rules, I was hoping people who had a system installed in Southern California can chime in with recommendations on who I should call to get quotes from. We can keep it positive. I believe as long as we follow the forum rules and not link to any installers website, we should be OK? (we CAN link to their www.solarreviews.com page if they have one?).
For what its worth, I'm looking for a system in the 5.5-6kw range. I'm southeast facing with limited roof space (hence the 5.5-6kw). My annual usage is around 9000kwh (but I'd like to use more, AC/EV, etc). I have limited shading issues (chimney shade in the afternoon).
LA Solar thinks I can only fit 15 Suniva 335W panels on the roof. Advanced Improvements thinks they can fit at least 17 LG 320W panels on the roof since they're smaller. LA Solar quoted SolarEdge with optimizers and Advanced Improvements is on board with Enphase S280 micro-inverters.
Anyway, as I said, hopefully we're not breakiing any forum rules. But I'm just hoping we can get back some of the discussion about specific installers and people who had good experiences with them.
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