Review for Celestial Solar Innovations

08/24/2018
Anonymous Gaithersburg, MD

Highly recommended

Summary. After researching solar, joining the Montgomery County Solar Co-Op, serving on the Co-op Installer Selection Committee, and interviewing more than a half-dozen installers, I ultimately chose Celestial Solar Innovations to install my 9.75 kW system. I liked dealing with the owner Jim Reilly. He and his installers did a great job, took the time to individualize details of the install to my specifications, completed the job on time, on budget, and with a neat, very clean look. Important to me, they used higher quality materials (panels, mounts) than many other installers and were competitively priced. System production has been excellent and the financial payback is on-track. I strongly suggest you do you own research, but I would absolutely recommend this company to my friends and anyone else. <br /><br />Details. I am a scientist by profession and I thoroughly investigated the technical specs of the available panels. In addition to the obvious efficiency and kW output, I suggest you consider the yearly degradation rate in the power output (power guarantee 90.76% after 25 years for Panasonic HIT vs 80% for most others), and the temperature coefficient of power, Pmax (best in class -0.256% for HIT). Less well known are the independent tests of panel failures due to thermal cycling, humidity-freeze, damp heat, etc. carried out by the European tester DNV-GL (do a Google search). Takes a bit of digging to get and sort through that data, but it is very informative. The NREL PVWatts site (Google it) is very useful for estimating energy production. Based on my winter/spring 2018 research I decided on the Panasonic HIT series - far better than cheap panels, often best in class, and less expensive than panels with similar specs (of current panels, only SunPower and LG have competitive specs IMO). I also specifically wanted the SolarEdge HD Wave inverter, which is smaller and more efficient than others, coupled with the SolarEdge optimizers, which allow energy optimization of individual panels. Parallel with the above technical research, I was seeking an installer. <br /><br />I found the large company solar installers to typically push low end panels, be inflexible with changes, and to be difficult to deal with because the salespeople had little control, often minimal technical knowledge, and had no real interest in the project other than using the standard hard-sell techniques to get you to sign for the largest possible system. More than once I had sales reps make statements and promises that later turned out to be untrue. They might be fine if you are OK with a generic lower-end system and are unbothered by the hard-sell experience, but I cared about the details. My own experiences, as well as on-line reviews and some I got through the co-op gave me pause about some of the large companies. In contrast, with Celestial, I found only good reviews. Further, I could get the equipment I wanted and was dealing directly with the owner Jim Reilly. He was knowledgeable, was willing to discuss the various options in detail, and gave me time to investigate and think things through. When I had specific requests, I had confidence that I could trust his commitments. Cost is important, of course, and Celestial was competitively priced. <br /><br />I also needed a new roof and wanted to move some plumbing vents etc. to allow for more panels and give a clean aesthetic look to the panel layout (moving the plumbing vents was straightforward and made a huge difference). Celestial was able to coordinate with a roofer of my choice (PJ's – highly recommended) and the combined project went smoothly and as-promised. The pre-install paperwork with Pepco, the county, and my HOA was taken care of on-schedule and I was kept informed during the process. Celestial's installers did a great job and were attentive to details – they had to cut the basement drywall to install the interior breaker and patched it perfectly; conduit runs were neat and discretely placed, visible panel mounting rails were painted to blend with the roof, etc. I've seen some cheap looking installs and the difference is very noticeable. I checked the roof penetrations from inside my attic and none missed the rafters. Gary (site foreman) and Chris (electrician) communicated well and were happy to answer my questions. The roof crew was friendly and cleaned the job site thoroughly. Everyone took care not to damage the landscaping. The county inspection was scheduled promptly and went smoothly. After 2 months I've had no problems with any part of the system and the production has been better than I'd estimated. The financial and environmental benefits are as expected. The few post-install questions I've had have been answered promptly by Jim. My experience has been 5 star all the way. I'm happy I went solar and happy I chose Celestial.