Momentum Solar

My lack of Due Diligence

After retiring from TX state government, I try not to complain. Some people are not happy people. But I have worked all my life and it doesn’t take much to return a telephone call. I had solar panels installed 2022 with thoughts of always having power. Now in Houston, every time the wind blows, there’s a power outage. I call Momentum after looking to access the “saved energy”! OMG, one needs a generator at another expense. Now I’m paying for solar panels and Momentum won’t call me back. I’m 70 y.o., RUN from this company. After my initial installation, I had to pay an electrician to correctly wire their system to my circuit breaker. I couldn’t simultaneously use my washer and dryer. Momentum never offered to reimburse me. They did send out an installer but couldn’t diagnose the problem. Just do your due diligence and research companies for practically any financial expense. I have learned though that costs are similar. The follow up is the big difference. Check out the customer service history!! Just stay away from Momentum Solar!!!! But if you don’t care about feeling like “whatever” call them. That’s their MO.

Worst Solar company ever. Avoid any business from them!

UPDATE JULY 6, 2023: They eventually came to fix my solar issue. I should raise my rating to 3 that would be more fair. ------ I am a Massachusetts customer with Momentum Solar. I installed the solar panel in April 2022. My solar system only worked half year then performance dropped down significantly. Started December 2022, it was fully shut down. Until February 2023 I noticed the electrical bill without any solar generation. I started my journey of customer server calling. How many times? 10s of times calling, at least 6 times, I got promise that service stuff would come on this or next week, 4 months past, no one come! I was so regret of having solar panels on my roof with Momentum Solar. It was the worst decision I ever made!

Not seeing any performance to that projected by the estimate

Questions not answered - overall efficiency. I have a 6.1 KW system on my roof. What is delivered to my home electical is a MAX of 4.3 KW. That is 70% efficient. Is that normal. Second question is that this zero cost was assuming that my electrical bill savings would offset my electric bill - this hasn't even been close. Third question is that saving would offset the monthly payment. My average savings of about $50 a month doesn't even cover the interest on the loan. Last question, review the back up plan in detail. I paid over $35000 to back up my internet and refrigerator. I expect the blame to be about 30% me for not asking enough or correct questions, but about 70% of the blame goes to Momentunm solar for over selling the capabilities of the system

No Help

Why do I keep getting these surveys when I get no response on my issues????

After sales

The after sales communication and service is poor, it is difficult to connect with someone and they d not return calls or messages .

repairing shingles after drilling into them

Craig was our sales rep and he was FABULOUS! Very informative, extremely nice and welcoming. My husband and I had a lot of questions and he did well answering them all honestly. We did have some hiccups after we signed the contract, and I have to be true to myself and my home with my reviews. In addition to a solar panels, we also agreed to have Momentum install a new roof. I understand now that after we signed our contracts the company experienced a divide between solar and roofing departments; Although contracts should be agreed upon all terms, that's where the hiccups lie. The team came to install the roof and overall they were clean and worked diligently! A project predicted to complete in two days they achieved in one day with a terrible storm brewing in the day of. They used a tarp all along our house to catch most of the nails; It's impossible to catch them all but they would very mindful. A week later our solar panels were installed and the team drilled their latter to our brand. new. roof... in the front of our garage. After they were done, someone filled the hole with tar and proceeded to step in it, having the tar goop out of the shingles and the black tar could be seen from the sidewalk of our home. It looks disgusting. So we complained and man came out on a Saturday to repair the damage. His way was rectifying the problem was simply pouring colored sand over the black tar, creating a very lumpy after look which could also be seen from far away. We were not given extra shingles when the roof was installed, so I asked nicely if it would be any trouble to replace the shingle, after he asked for our honest opinion. He thought we went back inside our home, however he walked to his car and screamed on the TOP of his lungs how he "WANTS TO GO HOME!!" and then screamed again because he got tar on the fabric of his car seats. I leaned into view and made eye contact with this unprofessional man. He went to home depot and never came back to our home. no phone call or anything. Four days later another team came out with the wrong color shingle and attempted to convince my husband that they did in fact have the correct one. So they went to home depot to look for our shingle... never came back nor did we get a call. ONE. WEEK. LATER.... I insisted talking to our project manager, because my husband was talking back and forth and getting no where with this guy. I find out through customer service( Very friendly girl) the project manager never documented ANY of our conversations we had with him. I've asked to speak to managers and honestly, I haven't. This company seems to be the non-confrontational type. This back and forth nonsense went on for 2.5 weeks. I know this because the company scheduled our county inspection and I asked that the shingle be repaired beforehand. This shingle FINALLY was replaced one day prior of my county inspection. The manager who repaired the shingle told my husband he fixed a handful of other shingles because the same tar messy appearance were all over the roof! Unbelievable... not entirely sure if solar roof or solar panel department is fully responsible but i am thankful of that mans honesty. The project passed inspection from the county; apparently our electric company drags their feet to switch the meters, can't be anymore dreadful that the run around this month has been. I'm giving the overall project a four star because Craig was fantastic and the gentlemen who came and talked to us about the roofing material was professional too! The lady I spoke with in customer service CC'd every email she thought would be helpful, and I value her professionalism as well. Im disappointed with the management team, yall leave disgruntled clients left to talk with your customer service team even when they ask to speak with someone higher up. Do better with confrontation and following up on concerns. There are also other terms we agreed too within our contract that has not yet been reflected. All in all, the entirety could have been avoided had people worked on communication and transparency. Also, cleaning up after yourself on our roof and NOT drilling into peoples shingles. New or old.

Just had my panels installed

I definitely give team T-24 5+ stars - they were very pleasant and answered all of my questions. They cleaned up everything - very impressed with them. The Project Executive assigned to me, Brandon Weir, never returned my calls. As a matter of fact I have never spoken to him. I returned one of his calls but never spoke with him. I give him one star. Frank, my sales person, was very nice. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't have known when anyone was coming to install my system. Now I'm at a loss as to who to call to see when the County and Duke will be coming out to check everything out and get my solar running. I certainly don't expect to be paying for anything until my system is up and running. My neighbors have been waiting to get theirs up and running for two months - totally unacceptable! I didn't know the answers for panel type, etc. in the review. Couldn't find any of that info in my folder.

They need help but they got the job done

I have had some very mixed expeiences with Momentum Solar. Some are 5 star, and some are 1 star. They made many promises when I had the initial sales meeting that they simply did not keep. I had to call several times just to get them to push the paperwork though with my HOA, and I finally had to do it myself. Several of the phone consultants in the office never return phone calls, so your wasting time talking to anyone other than the project managers. When it came time to have it installed, the lead installer was an idiot, but his workers were great. I asked him to take pictures of the holes he was drilling into my roof and show me that they were properly caulked, and he looked at me like I had asked for the head of his firstborn child. But the other workers said no problem and took the pictures and sent them to me as a text. It's like the management has no brains, but the workers do. The one saving grace to my experience with Momentum Solar was one of their project managers named Edwin Castaneda. He was the only reason I did not cancel the contract. He bent over backwards to get the contract pushed through and get the job done. He even got a reimbursement check, for the out of pocket cost, their falling behind the original contract date cost me. He was excellent. They did a great job installing it, but what a hassle to get it installed. But now that I have had it installed for a few months I am very happy that I stayed the course and got it done. It is producing almost $40 more each month than my electric bill, so I have a surplus credit with TECO power. And I don't have to worry about my electric bill increasing each year.

Exceptional Customer Service

This is a long read, but I promise it is worth it. I set up an appointment one evening to have a representative come to my house to discuss solar panels. Much to my surprise and displeasure, two gentleman showed up at my front door when I was only expecting one (please keep in mind I am a 30 year old female and live alone). The "30 minute consultation" lasted almost 2 hours and I told both men numerous times that I needed to leave but they did not seem deterred. The entire conversation, I was being pressured to sign things without being allowed to see them, and forced through the process and they would not take "no" for an answer. I took a day to digest the interaction, but still had a bad feeling in my gut, and decided to make a phone call to tell someone at the company so another person would not fall victim to these high pressure tactics and ensure that I did not sign a contract the night before. That is when I got the pleasure of meeting and working with Edwin Castaneda, the project manager. Within 2 minutes of telling him about my experience, he began to profusely apologize for how I was treated in my own home. I want to note that is was not your typical PR apology. It was a truly heartfelt and sincere apology. He gave it a personal edge which instantly made the knot in my gut go away. All my concerns were taken seriously and he IMMEDIATELY took action and brought my concerns up the ranks to prevent another person falling victim to this type of a sale. He continued to follow up with me over the next couple days to make sure all of my concerns were addressed. He told me if I ever decided to go use Momentum, I can contact him directly and he will handle it but he did NOT pressure me into keeping the contract. Can I attest one way or another about their solar panels or products? No, I can't. However, most people only share bad news, so I felt the need to take a moment to thank Edwin for his compassion, time and effort and going well above and beyond his job title to help a stranger on the other end of the phone. Thank you for all of your help and kind words. Momentum Solar is fortunate to have you on their team.

Misleading, unprofessional, pushy salesperson; great panels

Read the full post, because this is information that will guide you into a $20,000+ decision. If you decide not to, then you’ve probably already made up your mind :) I found out about Momentum Solar through a Facebook advertisement. Just to learn more, I clicked the ad and provided my information. I was contacted by a representative who asked me if I could spare one hour of our time to speak with someone. I told them I would be able to talk with them in a few days. The online rep asked if my wife would be around, and I said they would not. They insisted my wife be part of the discussion -- at this point I knew I'd need to be careful and fully expected everything that followed. My wife and I met with the representative. They took the time to ask us what we knew about solar, and gave us some background on the company. The sales rep sent some information on our house to their analysis and technical team which resides in another state. While they were busy doing the analysis and cranking on the numbers, we continued to receive more and more information. At one point, we were giving the following fact: "The national average increase in electric costs per year is 4%". So let's remember this number. The team sent back a sales proposal based on analysis of our property. It was explained to me that they have spent millions of dollars to subscribe to regularly scheduled satellite photos of potential installation sites, as well as the software which looks at the imagery and calculates how much power can be produced based on the latitude, longitude, average weather, elevation, tree and brush coverage, height of the building, pitch of the roof, and other complicated factors. Very impressive and all quite true. The proposal listed the total system cost, expected power generation per year, cost for payments on a 20 year loan, date of return on investment (ROI), and showed how with the average increase of 4% per year, it would be a no-brainer to get solar. I was excited. By this point, he was talking to us a bit longer than the one hour promised. We had a commitment, and I explained we'd need to wrap things up. At that point, he thought the appropriate response would be to belittle us — he said, "if whatever you have to do is more important than saving money and being your own power producer then we can wrap things up." So yeah that was pretty aggravating. I explained I would perform my own analysis, learn a bit more about solar, and give him a call back. He insisted that anything I needed to know about solar, he could tell me, and it wouldn't be worth it to spend the time doing the research on my own. The financial feasibility depends on three important factors: (1) The cost of electricity and a year-over-year increase of 4% (2) Panels that aren’t too expensive. For example, you might get a panel that’s “very good” and costs a normal amount, then there’s another panel that’s marginally better than “very good” but costs much more. So I did my research and asked for different panels. (3) The loan is packaged in a way that doesn’t cause you to pay a lot in interest on top of the panels. The proposal was inaccurate. As a resident of Tampa, our power is supplied by TECO. Over the last decade, they have not had a significant rise in electric costs. As a matter of fact, power costs often go down, despite claims by the sales rep that “Duke Energy” is raising all of their costs. Here’s the thing — if they use multi-million dollar software to model costs, why can’t they model the rising costs of electricity for the area of their potential customers? Then it would be an apples to apples comparison. They questioned my numbers until I told them they were from the Department of Energy and TECOs own historical day. Asked why they don’t provide an apples-to-apples analysis, the sales rep stated they don’t have the time, manpower, or relationships with power companies to accomplish that. Seems like the likely answer is if they told customers what it really costs to have solar, they wouldn’t have so many customers. Long story short on how we made the numbers work — we got panels that were priced appropriately and did a 10-year lower interest loan instead of a 20-year high interest loan. Even with relatively stable electric costs, it works out to our benefit. The installation took six hours and happened within three weeks. The installers were unprofessional. One of the installers urinated in my backyard. The other promised to send pictures of the installation so I could submit it to my insurance company. Never happened. Another got dirt all over my ceiling access to the attic — we had to repaint it. As you can imagine, once the sales rep secures the sale, they basically become unreachable. What used to be a 30 minute response time to emails becomes three days. The panels do a great job of supplementing our power and I’m glad we have them. They cover about 90-95% of our annual power consumption and there’s a great website that provides lots of information. My recommendation would be to get solar, price it out, run the numbers, and stay away from Momentum.

Momentum second review

I was promised certain things. After installation, these things did not happen. After my prior review, Gabby contacted me and helped me determine the problems. She and her boss, Joe, have said that they will make certain improvements. My esteem for Momentum has grown mostly due to the efforts of Gabby.

Momentum Solar

It started out great, but it is now over a year and I am still not fully up and running. PSE&G and Momentum Solar seem to have not a good relationship. One does not know what the other is responsible to do. Very frustrating. I now still pay a high electric bill to PSE&G plus the monthly installment to Momentum Solar.