Review for Certasun

09/12/2025
Doug Ferguson Chicago, IL

Certasun unreasonably delayed work and then abandoned us

My spouse and I are incredibly motivated to purchase and install a solar system at our single-family house in Chicago’s Bowmanville neighborhood. The roof of our house is new and has a large portion that faces south and gets great sun exposure. We also have sun-exposed garage roof space sufficient (with the south side of our home’s roof) to support 9-12 solar panels. We have plans for many high-efficiency electric appliance upgrades and to purchase an EV or plug-in hybrid vehicle, and we hoped to defray the anticipated additional cost for increased electricity usage with a solar system (and be better stewards of the environment). We were particularly driven to get a solar system installed before December 31, 2025, when the federal Residential Clean Energy Credit is now scheduled to end for residential solar systems. ComEd, EnergySage and several competing solar companies all determined in early July 2025 that our house would support a solar system, and we received multiple bids through EnergySage for such a project. After discussions with polite and seemingly knowledgeable Certasun representatives (Holly and Paul), we decided not to pursue other bidders and signed contracts with Certasun to install a solar system and fast EV charger in our garage. At the time we signed our contracts (on July 11, 2025), Certasun's representatives noted we would need trenching from the garage to our house's circuit box to support the garage panels and EV charger and a charge for this trenching was included in our contract. We were approved for financing and promptly made upfront cash payments (on July 15, 2025) to Certasun to start the work. That's when the trouble began. Despite Certasun's promise that it would move quickly on our project and written and verbal commitments to complete our project prior to December 31 (which would be required for the federal tax credit), and despite our immediate response to all interim correspondence from Certasun and requests to submit required information to them and ComEd (for the interconnection agreement), Certasun did not schedule a site assessment until August 28, 2025 (more than six weeks after we signed our contract). The site assessment determined that we would need to move some landscaping features to allow for the trenching from the garage to the house and that our electric panel needed to be moved due to ensure code compliance. The trenching obstacles were no surprise and were known to Certasun at the time we signed our contracts (and we had a landscaper lined up and waiting for information from Certasun to clear the path). The requirement to move the circuit panel was unexpected, but we also had our own electrician ready to promptly do this work as soon as Certasun confirmed the required scope of the electric work. Despite this, and notwithstanding our promise to clear all obstacles to installing the solar system and pleas during a phone call with Holly to allow us just two weeks to complete all work to clear the identified obstacles, Certasun abruptly and without recourse cancelled our contract and returned our payments on September 3, 2025. By this late date, all the other companies that had bid on our solar project in July had filled their installation calendars. In fact, when we submitted another request for bids on EnerySage following Certasun’s abrupt and unreasonable cancellation of our contracts, none of the prior bidders rebid on our project and we received no responses. This late abandonment by Certasun therefore cost us any chance to complete our solar project by December 31, 2025, meaning that any future solar system installation we complete (and we are still interested in installing solar!) will be significantly more expensive. We are confident that our own contractors could have removed all obstacles identified by Certasun quickly (we had even identified an appropriate new location for our circuit box that would have been a quick fix), and, unfortunately, we believe that Certasun used these relatively easy-to-address obstacles as a pretext for abandoning our project because it was smaller and would be less lucrative than larger projects that they may have in the works. We also think it is likely that Certasun over-committed to completing projects prior to December 31, 2025, and decided to use pretextual reasons to jettison smaller homeowners like us so that they can complete the larger projects on their calendar. This was an extremely disheartening experience for us that we believe was entirely avoidable by Certasun (either by more promptly scheduling our site assessment or by allowing us to use our own contractors to address the identified obstacles). For these reasons, we cannot recommend Certasun to potential future customers.