Choose the best solar contractor

Choosing the best solar contractor

Going solar is certainly a significant financial decision. Choosing the right solar contractor can be extremely dreading. Unfortunately, the industry is saturated with highly competitive sales representative that make a living purely based of the commission they get when they sale you the system. There is no “base salary”; their motto can easily be: “no sale, no food”. In other words, the (typically) unregulated sales department of a solar contractor has very strong incentives to promote a positively biased perception of how your solar system will perform. These incentives “creep through” every domain of the industry, from the salesman, to resources found online. Wether you are going solar because you wan’t to save on your ever-increasing electric bill, or because you wan’t to help the planet by using a renewable sources or because you rather have a clean solar generator instead of one powered by gas, this blog is for you.

But note; this blog is different, I’m an electrical engineer who worled in a solar installation company, my angle is technical and highly ethical. I believe the “sales department” of a solar contractor is the best window one can use to evaluate the honestly and competency of a solar contractor without having to spend thousands of dollars to later regret the decision. In this blog, I’ll empower you to see through this window with the most critical eyes. Not only will you know what questions to ask your sales consultant, what considerations to take before going solar, how to evaluate a solar proposal and what to look for in a solar contract, but also I’ll guide you to take the best decisions in the process of going solar. 

To understand why a solar system is not a trivial installation one must understand that a roof was not designed to carry solar panels. For example, in the HVAC industry the architectural plans of a home has all the vents and openings designed to accommodate for an A/C unit of a certain size. These plans are typically designed by and HVAC professional that knows what he is doing and that once the HVAC is installed there is little room for things to go wrong: either the home cools-down/heats-up or doesn’t. 

That’s not the case with solar. A roof feels almost like a blank canvas for a salesman. They can really install you the panels however they want, portrait, landscape; the more panels the larger their commission. It will be later in the engineering phase that panels may be removed and you will produce less energy than what they originally specified.

Also, a roof was never designed to carry panels. In fact, a roof only has two main purposes: to be weather-proof and to carry a load. Both purposes are highly regulated by building codes (Specifically the ACSE 19-7). Unlike an HVAC installation, if the solar contractor fails to do the appropriate engineering, there is a lot of room where things may go wrong. Water leakage is a common one, but also panels flying off the roof or even fires caused by faulty connections. And because this is a quiet new industry, inspectors often fail to completely understand all the pieces and often times will approve of installations even when these are not up to the building code. Unlike many other industries, there are no straight forward ways to know if your solar system is actually working, the contractor may install you a whole system that is not working and you may realize it a month later when your electric bill is due. That’s why my purpose with this blog is to provide you with the best tools to evaluate your contractor and truly choose the best one at the best cost.