Slingshot Power

I had a good, technical phone conversation with the first salesperson, so we arranged for a site survey to be performed at our house. Unfortunately the guy doing the site survey did not show up and I had trouble contacting the first salesperson. I second salesperson took over saying that the first one had a family issue come up. I second site survey was performed well. We have a stone coated metal roof, which requires special experience and so was one of the key factors in choosing a solar installer. Slingshot convinced me that not only did they have the experience but they would be hiring a roofer with extensive experience installing stone coated metal roofs to work on the job and insure the integrity of the work. Another key factor for us was being able to install the system before PG&E's NEM 1.0 program filled up. Slingshot was able to offer us the soonest installation time by far. One unique feature of Slingshot Power's offering is that they do an annual cleaning of the panels to save the homeowner from risking their neck. For this job I closely evaluated seven contractors and had quotes from an additional four. Besides matching or beating the other contractors on quality, Slingshot gave me a great deal on installing the highest quality panels from SunPower. They were also flexible in letting me downsize the system after signing the contract without changing the price per Watt. The majority of the installation took a single day. The crew lead did a great job of communicating with us, including introducing everyone and taking pictures throughout the job so that I didn't feel that I needed to climb on the roof and check on their work periodically. They had an impressive number of people here, but everyone seemed to be quite active. I didn't notice people standing around waiting for instructions. The crew lead was quite enthusiastic about the job and his work. The truck was also impressive -- nicely organized and equipped. From what I saw, the crew did a good job with the safety precautions -- lashing the ladder to the house so that it wouldn't tip and having the safety ropes. They did a great job cleaning up afterwards. The one area of the installation in which I wasn't completely satisfied was the caulking of the wood trim around the main electrical panel -- the bead was rather sloppy, some of the caulk fell out right away, and there were gaps. I sent Slingshot photos and the guy that had done that work said that the wood was rotten. They then offered to make a special trip back to replace the wood and re-caulk it -- which was done well. After installation, the county must inspect the job and approve it. The final step is to submit the application to PG&E and get their permission to operate (PTO). During this stage I was working with Slingshot's Manager of Customer Happiness (MoCH). Unfortunately, I was least happy with his service during my dealings with Slingshot. As mentioned before, we were anxious to get it installed before the NEM program filled up. Once the county inspection was passed, the MoCH asked for a copy of our power bill. I had provided one to the salesman a month earlier when the contract was signed, so this caused an unnecessary delay of an entire business day. He then said that we had to get off the Smart Rate plan before switching to solar, so this took another day. It should have been done sooner since they had our bill early on. There was then some slight delays because he entered some information wrong on the application to PG&E. In the end we did make it into the NEM 1.0 program, but we were one of the last. Once PG&E gave PTO, we had to wait another half a week before "throwing the switch" and starting to produce power because Slingshot had to come back out and finish configuring power converter. They said that they had gotten a batch that didn't configure automatically as usual. In general, the MoCH was not responsive to all of my emails. Sometimes I had to send a second note and then he would call me back. We were now producing power, but we didn't have access to the SolarEdge portal to see the monitoring data. The MoCH said that SolarEdge was updating their servers and we couldn't get connected for a while. After a month of waiting, I contacted SolarEdge directly and they said that the upgrades were a continuous process that would not affect getting a monitoring account. Contacting SlingShot again, a different person called me back quickly and got our monitoring account set up. I noticed that the orientation of our array on the portal was incorrect, and he took care of fixing it. Overall, it was a very positive experience despite a few hiccups along the way, but Slingshot took care of correcting everything in the end.

unknown

The entire process went smoothly. Begin with a system quote from Paul Sherer with a design layout, followed by a feasibility study of the roof and where the panels are to be installed. I have a metal tile roof and the previous solar vendor actually rejected the project. Slingshot first installed the 240v outlet and that took 2 people a whole day to complete, as my electric panel is at the other side of the house from the garage. The panel installation took another 2 days that included the interconnect, upgrading the breakers on the panel. The staff was professional, courteous and focus on doing the job right. Then the city inspection and followed by submitting the application to PG&E. The approval took only 3 days which was a pleasant surprise. Slingshot came out to install a CDD so I can monitor the performance and output of all 13 panels. Not only the project completely very smoothly and on time, the final price I paid is exactly what was quoted from day 1. Now that my electric car is here, I think I can recover the cost within 2 years.