Sun Badger Solar

We have mixed feelings about our experience with Sun Badger Solar. In short, the equipment itself is great and the sales and installation teams were outstanding. However, a simple miscalculation on Sun Badger’s part, and refusal to own up to the mistake from upper level leadership, including the president, Trevor S., really soured our experience, so unfortunately we cannot recommend Sun Badger. In our experience, it appears that Sun Badger put profit over customer commitment. Here’s our experience in more detail, for those to whom it’d be helpful. The positives: Everything about our experience with our salesperson, Jake H., was outstanding. He helped us understand all our options and was very attentive to our questions, thoroughly addressing all of them to ensure that we were making the best possible decision for our needs and our property. Even after the initial consultation and throughout the process, Jake and the others on the project management team were available and responsive if we ever had any questions or wanted to touch base. About a week before the installation was scheduled, we found out that the panels we had planned on were not available, but that a similar higher-producing panel in the same size was. Sun Badger offered to swap these in, like for like, which we very much appreciated. The panels themselves are high quality and performing as they should be. The negatives: Our most significant negative experience in the process was that on the day of the install the installation crew informed us that the number of panels Sun Badger had laid out in their design would not fit. Our roof surface is a simple rectangle, so calculating the number of panels should be simple math. The installation crew rearranged the panels in such a way that they could fit as many as possible on our roof, but we were still left with 2 fewer panels, which translates to a system that produces 7% less energy than expected. This may sound like a small percentage, but when our goal was to max out our production to get as close as possible to the 120%-offset limit (as set out by our utility, Xcel Energy), 7% makes a big difference, especially considering how that multiplies over the 30-year life of solar panels. Had we known the original panels wouldn’t fit when we should have known—right after the engineering site visit—we would have re-designed, with different panels that would get us closer to our energy production goals. Instead, we were faced with a day-of-install decision of either delaying our project until the following year to accommodate a redesign (and therefore accept a lower federal rebate rate), or opt for a lower-producing system. We went with the latter. This caused another issue on the financing side since we had signed the financing documents at the beginning of the process, and could not now change those documents with our lender. Sun Badger did credit us for the panels that were not installed, so we could apply those funds to the principal on our loan, and they have assured us that they’ve changed the loan process so that this won’t happen to future customers. With regards to the miscalculation, Sun Badger says they’ve made system changes to avoid this error in the future. However, when we approached Sun Badger for any sort of good-faith gesture of compensation to help make this right for us, the best they could do was an Amazon or restaurant gift card. In fact, Sun Badger largely avoided owning responsibility for the error and the long-term negative impact it will cause us over the life of the panels. Sun Badger also avoided apologies by saying things like, “at the end of the day, you still have a great system and are getting thousands back in rebates.” True, but we are not getting our planned return on investment. The empty words and platitudes don’t address the problem. Sun Badger’s leadership’s lack of responsibility is the most disappointing part of this whole experience. We don’t question that the panels themselves and the installation are great, and our experience with our salesperson, Jake, was great. But if the best that we can say is that the product itself, installation, and the salesperson were great, you’d be better off finding another solar company that can accurately design a panel layout and will do the right thing for their customers.