Solar is Freedom Reviews

After posting an earlier review, Solar is Freedom finally worked with me to have the electrician come out and finish the work, five weeks after the original installation. They also arranged for an additional backup battery to be installed at over $4,000 less than had been quoted in my original request for installation. Unfortunately, it is a second financed item and has its own payment plan. I was told that this will be a new queue item and it will be 90 days before they can complete the work. They may be able to come earlier, but no promises. Adam T. said that I had not previously validated my email, so many of my emails went to his junk folder. He promised that if I call or text him, he will respond within 24 hours or the next business day.

I have just had my solar panels installed. This process was satisfactory but did take longer than I was told. After electrical work was completed my hot tub kept kicking breaker, I was told this was on my end. Hot tub worked before they came and did not when they left. Crew left and didn't come back for a week. Electrician made me wait to even assess hot tub. He said it was my equipment but would have been nice for electrician to fix while he was there. Going on 2 weeks without hot tub due to wait time with local electrician. Anxiously waiting to see if this saves on electric bill. Karim is super nice to work with.

Overall, I am mostly satisfied with the system and my experience with the company. Put more accurately I think I got the system I wanted, but dealing with the sales and back office was often dominated by poor communication and a distinct feeling I was not getting the whole story when issues would come up. Even today after over half a year from install, I have issues with incorrect data logging (a glaring programming issue from SolarEdge Corp and outside of Solar is Freedom’s control) and cannot get access to the detailed panel data included in all of SolarEdge’s promotional information. The latter issues is a Solar is Freedom configuration issue, which despite multiple requests they will not grant to me. This feels like an attempt by Solar is Freedom to reduce their warranty calls when the panels do occasionally go bad. and I suspect so they don’t have to explain to customers the intrinsic variability of panel yield. To me it feels a little slimy on the part of Solar is Freedom. I did a fair amount of research on the engineering and financials before I started bidding the project and I knew that there was a very wide range of quality in installers in the industry from very small high quality local people, to big corporation trying to muscle in, to some downright scammers. I knew I didn’t want one of the door to door style PPA/lease scammers and I didn’t want to deal with a big corporation that was trying to squeeze profit out of me, but I was also trying to stay with in my budget. Solar is Freedom fell into that sweet spot of about 4 local companies that I had bid the project. Of the 4 companies that bid the project, Solar is Freedom was the most aggressive used car type sales pitch, but they had the best warranty, they were willing to work with me on some on the more unusually requirements I had (ground pole mount, option for DC coupled batteries in the future, and the ability to operate when the grid was down.) In the sales pitch, I thought their pay back financials were way optimistic, but their system install prices were very competitive. The Powerpoint-like initial engineering plan with rough layout and minimal Bill of Materials was very crude but gave me enough confidence to sign up with them. I figure their engineer would spend a little bit more time on it once the job was secure like specifying string sizes, min wire gauging and other rudimentary requirements. Little did I know that was all that was going to be done as far a system design was concerned. Since a site visit never happened, initially due to the COVID lock down and then was just forgot about, I ended up doing most of the panel siting optimization myself with a compass and sextant phone app to minimize the effect of some trees, online tables of sun latitude vs time in the year, and a department of energy solar estimation program. I had to send in PowerPoint designs to get things straightened out with the permitting. Most of the real engineering work was done by the top notch tradesmen once they got on site and tried to interpret the frankly embarrassingly crude “engineer’s” plans. We had a permitting issue initially due to some backyard zoning weirdness in Warren county, but the lady in the permits department for Solar is Freedom is great and got all the variances and request filed right away. I was a little annoyed when I had to go to the county board of variance meeting by myself (creating my own presentation the morning before the meeting) and represent both myself as the homeowner and as the installer (Solar is Freedom) before the board. But the variance passed and with that squared away in June I was told by my salesman to expect install in about 3 weeks. Initially I was very frustrated because the project install date kept creeping out without explanation. Once the zoning issues was taken of care of the project was perpetually 3 weeks out from install. This went on for about 3 months, and then another 2 months when the install was going to happen between 1-2 weeks away. After the fact, I discovered they had many issues that were out of their control when some key people had gotten hurt, or gotten sick, and then some supplier issues with the mount company I requested they use. There had also been some obvious signs that the backroom shop forgot to order materials as 1 inverter was overnight drop shipped to my house from Michigan and the other never arrived on the day it was needed. It was also clear that other clients had been moved in front of me in the schedule, something confirmed to me when I erroneously started getting paper copies of other people’s Solar is Freedom permits sent to me. Being an engineer and a project manager, I know that things happens, stuff gets delayed… but I am not going to be nearly as frustrated if I’m not kept in the dark that issues are going on. Makes me feel disrespected. Through the whole waiting period I would often not hear from my salesman Adam for 2-4 weeks. I suspect Adam was in the frustrating position to not have any more idea of what was going on than I did, but I often had to push him to go ask Pat (the shop foreman?) for an update. Pat would feed him a line, and then Adam would report back to me. It got so bad I threatened to drive down to Amelia to try to get someone with some authority to sort things out. Once the install got started communication improved a little bit (mostly because of the tradesmen) but folks would get started, put in 2-4 days of work and then disappear for several weeks as Pat pulled them off for other projects. As someone who has run a few industrial shops, and with what little information filtered to me, it seemed like Pat was in over his head, wasn’t great at communication, and either needed someone else to split the work with or needed to be replaced as back warehouse foreman. The install started end of October, with the bulk of the install completed just barely by the end of the year. By early December I was afraid that project wouldn’t be done by the end of the year and I would miss the tax credit before it was reduced (it ended up being extended.) Luckily we squeaked in on Dec 26th 2020. There was some lingering install issues and the trench got forgotten about and didn’t get filled in till mid-March, but by that point the system was operating as intended (other than the data logging) and I was too exhausted of being the annoying customer to keep pushing things. The saving grace on the project was all the tradesmen I dealt were top notch. The electricians the installers, the trenching contractors all put in spectacular work. The quality of their work exceeds what I had expected and I can’t speak highly enough of them. I am confident the pole mounts would survive a nuclear blast and the electricians left my panels clean, organized and brought up to modern code from when the breakers had been installed 30 yrs ago. I had hoped to get all the circuits in my house back up to the solar system, but the head electrician was not comfortable doing that. I thought he was being a little bit conservative based on the loads, but based on his earlier explanations, I trusted him and his years of experience. It was a great example of the customer not getting exactly what he wanted but feeling respected and good with decision that was made by the experts. There were a couple places where they had to do things different than normal roof installs, including lightning protection, but when brought to their attention they, without fail got the part or information they needed to set things right. I think several of the folks who worked my project got promoted to supervisor type roles and I think they absolutely deserved it and will help Solar is Freedom grow. Based on the “were going to do this right, nor necessarily fast” attitude I felt well taken care of by Solar is Freedom and, all the problem schedule issues aside, I was going to end up with a premium quality system. In the end I got an excellent well installed system that I expect will last with little to no future maintenance. I just wish the project management had been a little bit more organized and a lot more communicative.

We chose Solar is Freedom because they are rates #1 in the stte of Ohio. They offered 1 day installation and outstanding interaction with the electricians. We had very little follow-up communication. Received an email the permit should be approved in 2 to 3 weeks. Four minutes pater got an email stating the permit was approved. Instllation team did not let us know when they arives nor when they left and they sid not cleanup their plastic, cardboard nor cigarette butts which were theown in the yard and on our deck. We were not told there were conditions to receiving the $500. We learned of the conditions theough the wmail asking for this review. Adam T helped clear up the confusion of how many panels we needed for the offaet we wanted.