Semper Solaris Reviews

I’m a veteran and my experience with Semper Solaris has not been very positive. Changing prices, and their sakes people seem to be all about money. They don’t treat their returning customers very good. I

Project planning g an installation of panels, inverters, etc. went quite well and we were please. Main Problem is that there do not have enough good maintenance engineers. 2 years after installation one off two inverters failed and needed to be repaired/replaced. It took 3 months overall to get this done- in the meantime electricity production was at 50% of design capacity and my electrical bill went up accordingly! Same inverter failed at the end of 2000. It took the company 2 1/2 month to come and do some repairs. One of the 2 circuits is still not working. It is now 5 months before and I still can not produce the quantity designed and promised. My electricity bill still is up considerably. Also the maintenance department is very hard to reach -phone, Email do not get answered. Message box of main engineer full! Very unhappy with how I as a customer of a very expensive installation gets treated.

After four years of trying to get Semper Solaris to honor their contract of under production I wish I had never done solar and have never gone with this company. It has added so much anxiety to my life. The sales team and production team underestimated the amount of solar that my house could produce and promised me more than the system was able to provide. They are now emailing me false information about my production saying that it is actually meeting specs, and when I called them on it they say whoops we were looking at somebody else’s account. Feels very shady to me. I will update if they eventually resolve the issue. I still very much want to recommend this company under the current situation I definitely cannot as it is costing me $600 a year more than you should be.

They pepper their website with words like “integrity, loyalty, and responsibility” and claim that we should trust them to be experts who will “get the job done right.” Having served proudly in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’m offended that they are claiming these values and waving flags as a marketing tool when their competence, organization, and level of service is disgraceful. I hired Semper Solaris for a new roof and solar array because of their sales pitch and because I believe in supporting veterans. It was a big mistake. The project went sideways many times, significantly increased in price from the original contract, and took nearly nine months to complete. The issues were all self-inflicted by Semper Solaris and not problems with permitting (besides them failing multiple inspections). Throughout the project, they consistently failed to communicate with myself and the subcontractors who were working on the project. A quick timeline: 31 May, 2018 - Signed contract and paid deposit 6 September - Main panel upgrade. PG&E disconnects power. Subcontractor electrician (probably not a licensed electrician - Semper would not provide me with his name or license info after the fact) screws things up big time and we don’t have any power for two days. Panel not upgraded. I have to throw out two refrigerators of food. Semper says they will cover it, but never do. 7 September - Semper Solaris installs temporary couplers to get power back on because PG&E will not accept their work. 4 October - 2nd attempt at panel upgrade. Panel is upgraded, but fails inspection. I’m told the roof is scheduled for 17 October. 15 October - Semper cancels 17 October roof install and reschedules for 23 October. 23 October - After moving cars, preparing for the roof install, and taking the morning off from work to make sure things get started smoothly, Semper calls me at 8 AM to tell me the roof isn’t happening that day. 11 November - Roof is started. It is finished that week without major issues besides a large amount of roofing debris that was not cleaned up. 20 November - Semper Solaris contacts me and tells me they no longer have the type of inverter they sold me and try to sell me a different kind. I push back and they agree to install what we initially agreed on. 27 November - One of our cars gets two flat tires in my driveway from roofing debris. Semper does pay for the tire that was destroyed by the nail that went through the sidewall. I patch the other one myself. December - Solar installation. Lost the exact dates. 10 January - Solar passes inspection. Main panel upgrade fails inspection again. PG&E will still not permanently reconnect power from 6 September clusterf*. 16 January - Permission to operate from PG&E (solar, not main panel) 29 January - After finally passing the main panel inspection, PG&E reconnects my power. The PG&E lineman calls me at work to tell me that the electrical work technically passes code but is janky and I should consider having someone revisit the work. 7 February - Semper Solaris gives me access to their monitoring portal. I find that one of my panels is underperforming and reach out. They initially deny that this is the case. 26 February - After struggling to get anyone to respond to my requests, Semper Solaris agrees that the panel is underperforming, but because the panels were installed in the shadow of an exhaust vent on my roof. They point out that in the summer the sun will be higher and all of my panels will work at that point. 28 February - Earlier in the month I had noticed that my attic was full of debris from the roofing work, including trash from the roofers' lunches. Semper pointed out that debris was allowed in the contract, but agrees to clean up the lunch trash and collect final payment. They are supposed to show up at 8 AM. I wait until 8:30 and go to work after they don’t show up. I mail them a check for the balance and clean the attic myself so I don’t have to deal with them anymore. Some other things: Their salesperson did not go on my roof, inspect my electrical, or enter my attic. I asked how he could prepare my contract without examining those things, but he was insistent that they had done an estimate using special mapping software and I shouldn’t expect any significant changes. They ended up sending me change orders that added up to $5,970. All but $300 (dry rot) of those items were foreseeable and should have been in the initial contract. They either wrote the initial contract incompetently or intentionally planned on adding the change orders later to come in at a lower bid. Because of the borderline criminal dishonesty, I got them to drop the extra charges to $2,240 after a significant amount of back and forth. The salesperson also claimed that I didn’t need to replace my gutters. After the roofers started, they claimed that there was no way to save my existing gutters and cut them off. The roofers, who were subcontractors, offered to work under-the-table and install new gutters without Semper’s involvement for several thousand dollars. I declined. I still don’t have gutters, but that will be another expense that was not accounted for in the initial contract. After the 6 September incident and near the completion of my project this February, I requested to have a veteran-to-veteran conversation with Kelly, the owner. I was denied both times and one of the employees noted that she had, in fact, never met him. Two-stars because in the end, I do have a roof and a solar array. Getting here might have taken a year off my life though.

We just completed having a roof and solar installation at our house. This was the worst construction company I have ever dealt with. Their roofing company broke my $500 bird bath. I was also told that when the project was complete we would be reimbursed the first payment since everything took so long. We could not get an answer as to when we would receive the $199. As to when we will actually receive the reimbursement for the birdbath that we hear has been, is anybody's guess. No one seems to talk to one another. My son's installation down the street was even worse. We figured out what the problem was and tried to tell them. They finally saw that their subcontractor installed a meter that was not in compliance with this cities electric company. Hopefully it will get fixed in the next couple of weeks before my son has to start his payment on the system. Knowing him, he will start a claim with the Contractor's License Board. He really feels like he has had to jump through hoops for these people. It seems a real shame because the work that they do seems to be of good quality.