Not sure if a company can be proven to be as woefully inept as this company has been through our young life with our solar implementation. Company was one of many we discussed our needs with and while price was obviously a contributing
factor, the fact that they also were doing a solarize movement in several towns nearby with positive feedback contributed to our going with them.
We outlined what we wanted through the sales process which was a consolidation of what we learned as to be a good package through all the contractors we met. The end result was a tracker unit with a SMA inverter. The inverter was very
important to us as the SMA brand was built up by many of the contractors as being considered the best. In addition we went with what is widely considered the best panels on the market, at least in warranty, SunPower (yes they are
expensive). The goal was a turn key operation that was warrantied for 20 years (10 for the tracker). Panels = 20 and Inverter with extended warranty = 20.
During installation they delivered tracker to wrong town. I ended up being involved way more than a homeowner should be in this process. When it ended up being delivered they had to take it piece meal up my driveway and put it in rocky
soil causing much of the painted surfaces to be chipped and starting to rust. Putting up the tower proved to be a bad experience as they not only put up rusted parts (they swapped with another tracker client in the area so I feel bad
for that person) they attempted to install the incorrect inverter - an undersized and non SMA inverter. I immediately stopped the installation (recall importance of SMA in our contract with them) and once again found myself doing an
immense amount of research and correspondence with solar manufacturers including the inverter they intended on using. The manufacturer stated that our production would be capped based on panels (refer to upgrading panels to get max
production) and not an appropriate match. When confronted with this C-TEC stated that they found an issue with the sizing of the solar array long after the sales process that they took the liberty of changing without ever contacting us.
Their solution was to simply throw up an assembly that would not produce what we were paying for.
This was resolved after about a month and a half of back and forth with them resulting in an SMA inverter being installed and us paying for additional panels to get the proper match between inverter and panels. Once again I found myself
doing an incredible amount of the work. We're paying tens of thousands of dollars, largest investment we've made besides home purchase, and we're doing the work for the folks we're paying. Months of delays from paying them tens of
thousands of dollars and we eventually got operational.... so we thought.
Not really, only partially operational as after all the pain and headache to date we now had a system that looked great but only produced two thirds of what it was supposed to. I spent a lot of time trying to convince C-TEC something
was wrong. They even had the gaul to state that the shading in the area was to blame after we had spent thousands of dollars taking trees down to get a great line of sight which didn't sit well with me. While to their credit they sent
their electrician to review and check it they found nothing wrong but there obviously was. As is evident throughout this process I was doing way more than I should have had to and reached out to CEFIA. One thing I neglected to mention
earlier was that I was never provided a way to monitor the system earlier in the project so I had previously reached out to CEFIA and arranged to get this setup - I shouldn't have had to. During this setup process it was found that the
hookups were reversed in the equipment thus their software was reporting negative production instead of positive. CEFIA stated they could modify their reporting to multiply it to become a positive number - a little odd to me but it
worked for reporting purposes.
CEFIA arranged for an independent solar consultant to come out and check the system. We had a great independent MA based solar guy come out and discovered our main production problem in a matter of minutes. There are three 'strings'
that come into the inverter - 2 had the appropriate voltage, one had none. There was a string representing 1/3 our production that wasn't registering at the inverter - makes sense as the production we were getting was 2/3 of expected.
In addition to the big finding there were alot of other items he noted as not being acceptable including how the panels were connected with their cables being severaly pulled at angles to get them to connect. He stated this is very bad
for the connections as stress is put on them.
With the verbal findings I reached out to C-TEC and they preferred to wait until the report came out. At this time I was no longer only working with a gentleman that represented himself as being part of the senior management but now
also was working with a newly hired operations manager. It was determined that the operations manager and a crew would come out and try to resolve the issue. In the end putting less stress on the cables by using longer cables or
lengtheners as recommended by third party inspector, resolved the problem with production. Its amazing what hooking up things the right way will do for production. Its too bad that the folks that came out that day forgot to turn on the
breakers to get the tracker working again. At this point I was furious as to the ineptitude of simple things and refused to touch the tracker and C-TEC sent another tech out in the coming days to resolve the fact the system wasn't
functioning due to the breakers not being set correctly. Happily ever after right...... WRONG!
We made it several months, finally generating more electicity then we're using resulting in the desired connection fee only electrical bills. After the initial honeymoon period of checking the generation on a daily basis we stopped and
only checked it when curiousity got the better of us. Guess what.... recently we found that while the assembly is functioning tracking the sun the inverter is not. For days now we've had no production, actually reports as negative
production on the days where heat and humidity draws folks to air conditioning = higher electrical use = love to be generating our own.
You won't believe it.... I called C-TEC and informed them of the issue, so much for them monitoring it and to their credit they arranged for a technician to come out and take a look at it the following day. My wife ensured her schedule
would accomodate it and the tech showed up today which is why I've now chosen to compose this review now as it was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. Tech shows up and looks at it and says, yep somethings wrong but I left
my tools elsewhere so I'll have to reschedule. I didn't know smart phones replaced swear words with ***** when you spoke into them but for my wifes benefit it did. As surviving by working incredibly hard in the service industry myself
I simply don't know how a company can operate with such ineptitude. At this point we're hoping to get it back and running while not burning through all our credits we've managed to push to electical company but the way things have been
going and my faith in getting this resolved I believe the months of production will be for naught - THANK YOU C-TEC!
Moral of the story: I wholeheartidly believe most solar contractors are focused on their sweet spot, roof mount systems. While C-TEC may debate this I believe they are rather limited in their skills with advanced configurations such as
tracking systems if our experience is anything to judge it by. Regardless of the manner the panels are mounted (roof, ground, tracking, etc.) the core of the configuration is the same (Panels - inverter - electrical company) and one
would think experience aside, the basics would be a strength of anyone. I find it mind boggling that anyone working in the industry that is supposed to be monitoring the system cannot detect or resolve, without third party inspectors,
production issues and when scheduled to troubleshoot malfunctions, not have tools to do so (oh yeah tools... I'll finish with that). I assume its not their production so the caring isn't equal to the homeowners.
In regards to tools.... the installers, when fixing the inverter issue and panels, left their tools on the tracker that ended up falling down the panels with their shart corners top to bottom. We were told if the panels suffered damage
we'd see it in production and we'd resolve it that route. Wait I know....I should have put the tools back on the system then so the technician today could have used them!
Lets hope for the sake of sanity this issue becomes a distant memory... its hard to be optimistic when faced with what we've been through.... read more
Type: Residential Electric
Reviewed: 07/01/2014
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