04/29/2016
Anonymous
San Diego, CA
My experience with SRE and Stefan, the owner of the company, has been exceptional. After going through several bids from salesmen of large local installers here in San Diego, I chose SRE. SRE does not have all the overhead of paying for such things as salesmen and advertisements, so as a small privately owned company, they are extremely competitive on price. Additionally, I learned by talking with Stefan that he had several years of experience installing Solar for commercial installations prior to starting his own company. To me, this signaled professionalism because electrical code for commercial installations are generally more stringent than residential code.<br /><br />I am a bit of a research fanatic and probably spent a good year intermittently studying all types of panel and inverter systems. When it came time to ask for a quote from SRE, there was no pushing of systems or inverter types from Stefan. I told him exactly want I wanted and how big of a system I wanted. I went with some great quality and highly efficient LG310 panels and a Powerwall ready SE7600 inverter system. I was pleasantly surprised when I received no push back--just a great quote ($1-$2 less per DC watt than the big boys). The salesmen from the larger companies all pushed for a particular system and often did not even know about certain details I had discovered during my extensive research. This is not to say that Stefan and SRE would not help you choose an appropriate system if you needed it. He definitely knows his stuff.<br /><br />I was pleasantly surprised, shocked even, at how quickly SRE installed my system. From the time Stefan came and inspected my roof and we signed the contract, it took less than 3 weeks to get permitting approved by the city. While my research did not extend to the permitting process, Stefan showed me the engineering plans and blueprints even, and they looked quite impressive. I'm assuming this stems from his commercial experience. After approval, Stefan came the following week with his crew and installed the system in a couple of days! No waiting, no queues. He followed up with the city inspector and SDGE the next day and I had my system approved for service. All in a months time--wow! We easily beat NEM 2.0 and will now be grandfathered in for NEM 1.0, saving us about $100-200 annually in additional fees as part of NEM 2.0.<br /><br />As to the quality and professionalism of the installation, it was an exceptional job. The attention to detail is what I look for--things like how neat the wiring is in the box and how the conduit is painted and tucked under the rooftop as it travels from my inverter to the box. Stefan even set me up with full access to the monitoring for my system which allowed me to see the layout and individual performance of my panels.<br /><br />All in all, we could not be happier with Stefan and SRE. I have recommended him to all my co-workers, friends, and family. This has been one of the best investments we have made and we are glad we chose SRE.