Review for NRG Clean Power

Office location: 111 N. Market Street, San Jose CA, 95113

02/03/2024
R.P. Dublin, CA

Slow and incompetent

NRG was only efficient at the sales portion. I had a cash purchase and i had to pay 90% upfront up to the stage of permitting. From that point onwards, that was when things syatt to get unpleasant. It took a few months to get an installation appointment. The installation representative lack responsiveness and I had to constantly be on their tail. The installation is fully outsourced to a contractor. The first day of the installation was a wash as the lift to the rooftop wasn't the right one. The hardware had to also be moved inside the garage as opposed to drawings which stated outside. That was resolved quickly and the installation went on. The nightmare started after the initial inspection process failed. The fix required was a simple smoke detector in the garage for the battery that linked with an auxiliary alarm inside the home. If the battery caught fire, the smoke alarm triggers and warns the people inside the house. This was apparently to complex for the NRG team sitting in the call center to understand. Things went back and forth between the NRG team, the contractor and the city inspector. It took probably 4 or 6 attempts to get things resolved. There were times when the city inspector showed up but the contractor wasn't present. On the last attempt, the NRG service rep came by instead, very pleasant gentleman and this time around, I intervened and provided specific instructions on what to do, and the inspection got through. It's been already more than 4 months into the installation process and I taught finally ita done. The service guy attempted to finally turn on the system, to my dismay, there was a problem in the hardware itself. So the usual back and forth a few times between the contractor and NRG. Then finally NRG decided to send over their best contractor and that gentlemen resolved it within 1 attempt. The Enphase hardware works well, I know I paid a lot for it but it's doing its job and I don't have any qualms on it. The outsourced contractors live on razor thin margins and they carry out the necessary work orders, I honestly didn't see any issue with any of the technicians who came by. I paid 90% cash upfront for the system, thats more than enough to cover NRG's cost and margin. The Enphae hardware works well. This leaves only NRG itself as the primary problem of this entire farce. Their remote team sitting in their comfortable offices gar away or maybe even working remotely from their bedroom was totally incompetent and unorganized. Turning back the clock, I could have found an independent contractor myself, saved tons of time in the process and money in the process as well. So either go with a provider who have their own installation team like Sunpower or Tesla; or find your own contractor. Don't waste time and money with big companies like NRG as you could well just be paying a lot more for incompetency.