Office location: 7100 W Florida Avenue, Hemet CA, 92545
05/05/2017
Anonymous
I recommend avoiding this company. Background, I had them add 25 panels to existing system on a secondary building on my property. We started this project in early November 2016. I was told it would take one day.<br /><br />First during the installation, it took about six days with many cancellations. Some were valid, like during all the rains we had in December. About 3 or 4 were "no shows" with no calls or heads-up. I had to constantly call them to find out what was going on.<br /><br />During design I ask if my system could be tilted for my efficiency as my building has only a 5deg pitch. I felt they never really addressed this question. I probably should have pressed harder but they were dismissive of the thought.<br /><br />Day one of the installation, the existing system had to be shut down. The workers worked diligently when they could but always seemed to not have the parts and have to make runs back to town or arrange deliveries. Bottom line, they really didn't seem prepared for the magnitude of the job. <br /><br />Then the rains came, and the cancellations, and the new appointments and the no notice cancellations due to their "back log" because of the rains. The excuses kept following, I've heard "we're back logged", "we're lightly manned today", "etc" <br /><br />I lost many leave and vacation days. And day where I could have done many other things waiting in vain for someone to show up or find out what the story was. All along my existing system wasn't producing and the new system wasn't working.<br /><br />In late January 2017, it was finally "installed." But they "finished" late in the day and I was told to wait a day or two to see if I had production. I waited and had no production. I called Horizon and I got another excuse -- "it's because you don't have permission to operate yet" Then in mid-February I get permission to operate and again I'm told to wait a few days. I do, and STILL no production. A few more calls, a few more excuses. I finally get a crew to come out in March to check the system. They find the problem quickly -- it's mis-wired. Really guys? You couldn't check this back in January before you "peaced out"? <br /><br />Unfortunately, AGAIN, the crew doesn't have the right supplies to fix the problem and had to come out again to fix it. (remember my existing 2.5KW system is STILL not producing either). So finally in Mid March, the system is producing, except the consumption monitors either are not working or not hooked up.<br /><br />Oh and I forgot to mention, this entire time I had an open 70' trench through my property! They finally in late March filled this in...and this took them TWO days! This is because they didn't do things that would make efficient financial sense. Example, instead of letting the crew rent a concrete mixer and save several hours, they had to had mix the concrete by hand.<br /><br />To be fair at this point in my diatribe, I did get a check for $250 for the lost production where I estimated that it really costed me $180. But still I've lost many days of leave from work with this hassle.<br /><br />So, since mid March, I've gotten a series of excuses for why they aren't working -- including my panel may not work with the monitors because it's too old. I had to actually point out to the representative that I paid $2900 to upgrade the panel as part of this install! "Oh, so it actually should work then..." was the sheepish response. <br /><br />So it's still not over, today I had an appointment for a crew to come out to check out the monitors. I had to call THEM just after 08:00am to verify that they were still on their way. And guess what?! They are "lightly manned today and can't make it" but we rescheduled for tomorrow (when I'm busy). <br /><br />WTF guys!!? Really? So today I wasted a perfectly good morning (AGAIN) waiting for no one from Horizon to show up.<br /><br />And forgot to mention the monitoring. I got the enphase with the enlighten system for monitoring. Initially, it was missing a panel on the mapping and was geographically mapped to the wrong location. They actually had to send out a guy (again ANOTHER appointment and ANOTHER day) to come out and check things and get the "missing" panel added to the enlighten system. Their solution to the wrong geographic location was just to remove that. So instead of getting a fancy google earth image of the system on the roof of my building, it's on a white back ground. Not a huge detail, but it begs the question of how much do they really care.<br /><br />Note the "stock" monitoring doesn't tell you anything other than total production every 15 minutes (and maybe consumption?). You have to pay ~$250 MORE to get status of individual invertors and panels. Given the failure rate of some models of enphase invertors, I may have to make this investment.<br /><br />So in summary: I really don't know how the other companies will treat you, but my experience with Horizon has been a negative one. You will probably eventually get a quality system but expect them to jerk you around in the process. Just not worth it in my book.