Review for Altair Solar Inc

04/29/2015
Anonymous

I'm Running on Sun!

I just got my system completed from Altair Solar. The inspector just finalized everything and I'm already generating sweet solar fuel :) It feels so good to not be giving all that cash to SCE. <br /><br />I did a lot of research when it came to getting solar at my house. I started like most do, looking at the big names like Solar City, Sungevity, and Sun Run. I got quotes from all of them, they all had one thing in common, aggressive salespeople and they all wanted to sell me a lease. This was obvious because their cash quotes were crazy high. I needed more information.<br /><br />Being new to solar, and extremely curious about everything and being a big nerd, I bought the Solar Electricity Handbook from Amazon and read it cover to cover. After reading it, I learned the difference between a microinverter vs. central inverters and other technical jargon. I also went on Solar Panel Talk's online forum and learned from the people there and shared my different quotes. They were very helpful. <br /><br />Ok, now that I knew what I was getting into, I decided to get quotes from local installers who were experienced contractors. I got 3 quotes, and I narrowed it down to Altair for a few reasons. First and foremost it seemed like Khaled from Altair was the most trustworthy out of them. I have had my share of nightmares from contractors in the past and didn't want a repeat of one of those situations. I have a pretty good "Larry David" radar for that sort of thing by now. Second, he really knew what he was talking about. Even with the recent knowledge that I had ascertained from the book I read and the forum, and my technical background, I was able to talk shop with the different contractors and could weed out their experience level. Third, Altair gave me a very competitive quote for the system that I was looking for.<br /><br />I finalized on a 41 panel, 280 watt mono black Solarworld system with m250 microinverters. 11,480 total Wp total. <br /><br />I finalized the contract with them and then went on vacation, scheduling them to come out when I returned. By the time I got back, he had already pulled the appropriate permits. The day I got back, he had all of the panels, microinverters, and equipment delivered to my garage and they started work. I have concrete tiles so they had to be careful up on my roof. Breakage is inevitable with these installs, but they were able to replace anything they had broken with new tiles. Within a few days they had the rails installed properly on my roof with panels gleaming in the sun ready to accept solar goodness. <br /><br />After they routed the conduits and hooked up to my panel, we were ready to turn it on and test. It worked! They installed a monitoring device from Enphase that allowed me to see on the web or on an app my daily and hourly generation. On the first sunny day I was already generating 60 kilowatt-hours! He told me I still needed to trim a tree or two to get optimum results because there was some shading during parts of the day, after which he said I'd get even more generation. It's only spring!<br /><br />Anyhoo, I'd completely recommend Altair if you are going solar.

Sales process
Price charged as quoted
On schedule
Installation quality
After sales support