06/23/2017
Anonymous
This is a MAJOR investment so I'll treat the review accordingly and try to cover my entire experience so far.<br /><br />I met with LA Solar Group, Solar City, and Crown Solar before deciding to go with LA Solar Group. My parents have panels installed by Solar City but I decided to do some shopping around just in case there were better prices out there and it turns out Solar City was the most expensive of the 3. Crown Solar was pretty competitive but doesn't seem to have a big reputation/many reviews.<br /><br />The last thing you want is to dump a bunch of money into a company and find out they went out of business and you can't get support on your hardware that was supposed to be covered by warranties.<br /><br />The guys from LA Solar group are smart and competitive. They asked to see quotes from the other providers and insisted they would beat their prices.<br /><br />I have a large tree in front of my house. While it does keep the house quite cool, shade is a known enemy of solar panels and they even offered to credit me for the tree removal in an effort to max out panel product.<br /><br />Financing is done through LA Credit Union.<br /><br />If you haven't done your homework, do study up on combo loans. It's tricky and probably sounds like a scam but relies on you getting a refund the following year.<br /><br />The actual install process was pretty smooth. I didn't have to babysit the installation and the mounting is clean. I have some reverse tilt panels on the rear of my house and they seem sturdy enough. I'm not actually offended by solar panels affecting the aesthetic of buildings, so there's not much to really note other than the panels are installed exactly as they were planned in the design app.<br /><br />Afterwards, it felt like I was a bit in the dark for system activation. The process doesn't end once the panels/inverter are up. You have to get permission to operate from your electric company (LADWP in my case).<br /><br />It took a few emails/phone calls back and forth between LA Solar Group and DWP to get things moving. As long as you are on top of the activation process, you'll get your system running in a reasonable time. Responses to status inquiries were always received in a reasonable amount of time and my sales rep never ignored any of my text messages.<br /><br />The monitoring app is somewhat limited if you are expecting live stats. Since the inverter is connected via a cellular connection, the readings only update in 4 hour intervals.