Find the Best Solar Installers Near You With These 7 Tips - CNET

You've decided to get solar panels. You've determined that you'll save money and how many years it will take to do so. You're ready to claim the federal tax credit and a few additional tax credits available in your state.

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Despite all that legwork, you're still missing a crucial part of the installation equation: a reputable solar installer that will give you a fair deal.

The solar industry has a crowded playing field right now and winnowing it down can feel daunting. The good news is that finding a solar installer isn't all that different from finding a contractor for another home improvement job. You'll ask your friends, read reviews and talk to a few.

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Here's a step-by-step guide to finding, vetting and signing with the right solar installer for your home.

7 tips to finding local solar installers near you

"Finding an installer to go solar isn't such a different process from other kinds of home improvement projects," said Becca Jones-Albertus, director of the US Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office.

You can start with a simple Google search. That will give you a broad overview of the companies that operate in your area. You'll likely find some national installers, like Sunrun, as well as some smaller outfits specific to your city. "Every area will have different companies that work in that business," Jones-Albertus said.

You can also consult directories that allow you to compare multiple providers (and sometimes even quotes) all at once.

If a local installer approaches you, feel free to consider them, but vet them just the same as you would any other contractor. "There are a lot of good companies in many industries that do proactive customer engagement, and of course there are also scams that come that way as well," Jones-Albertus said.

1. Understand your local incentives

You'll also want to have a good handle on the potential discounts available in your state, which an installer should help you take advantage of.

For example, the federal government now offers a tax credit worth up to 30% of the total cost of your solar system. On top of that, each state offers its own incentive programs, such as sales tax and property tax exemptions.

You can learn about the incentives in your state by consulting your local energy utility's website or checking out CNET's state-by-state guides.

2. Read reviews and complaints

Like any service, solar installers are subject to public reviews and complaints.

"It's similar to looking at reviews for your favorite restaurant. It can be valuable. It can also be swayed a lot by who has chosen to write those reviews. So it's just one piece of information along with other pieces of information," Jones-Albertus said. 

Start by checking out the Better Business Bureau and plug in a specific installer to see their reviews. As Jones-Albertus advises, take any specific instance with a grain of salt and focus instead on broader trends you notice.

3. Talk to your neighbors who have solar panels

The people you know who've already installed home solar panels can be a great resource. Seek them out to learn more about their first-hand experience with an installer.

Jones-Albertus recommends you ask them some questions like:

• How communicative and responsive was the installer to your questions?
• Did the project go as expected, or were there some hiccups?
• How responsive was the installer to any issues that arose?
• Were you happy with the process?
• How did you make your decision to use this installer?

4. Check licenses and certifications

There are a few key licenses and certifications that can also help give you confidence that you're choosing a reputable solar installer.

Jones-Albertus said the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners certification is one common license to look for. Each state has its own licensing requirements as well, but ultimately if an installer has a license, "it means that they have met certain requirements to demonstrate a certain level of proficiency," Jones-Albertus said.

If you're not sure which licenses apply to a certain installer, ask the company which licensing framework they follow, and they can point you to the state requirements that they abide by.

5. Get multiple quotes and compare

Once you've got a list of potential solar installers you're considering, you'll want to seek out a few quotes to compare prices. This will ensure you're not getting ripped off by one installer who's charging significantly more than market rates.

You can get quotes in a few different ways. Some installers will offer quotes online or over the -- without a home visit -- by looking at satellite imagery of your roof. (Be warned: If you choose this method, make sure the satellite images show the current state of your roof and how much shade it gets.) Other companies will want to visit your house in person.

Either way, seek out at least a few different quotes to compare not only the overall sticker price but also the warranties offered and the different financing options.

Read more: Want something smaller than a whole-home solar system? See our picks for the best best foldable solar panels and solar generators.

6. Ask the installer some questions

Comparing quotes isn't the last step before you settle on an installer. Jones-Albertus also recommends you have a conversation with each contractor and ask them any questions you might have. Those might include:

• Does this solar system design use the entire roof or just a south-facing portion?
• Should I replace the shingles on my roof before installing solar panels?
• What is the expected timeline for completion of the project?
• What does the permitting process look like, and how long will it take?

You can also use this process to get a sense of the installer's communication style and how comfortable you feel working with them.

7. Assess potential cost savings

The solar installers you seek quotes from should also help you understand the potential energy cost savings of a solar system.

This largely depends on how you finance the solar panels; with cash, a loan or by leasing the panels from the installer. The company should be able to estimate how much money you'll save by reducing your energy bill.

That depends on what you’re spending on electricity, the amount of power that an installed solar photovoltaic (PV) system can provide, your finances, and your time frame for living in your home.

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Calculate your average monthly electric expenses by tallying your electric bills for the past 12 months and dividing by 12. Plug that figure, and your address, into a solar calculator such as Google Project Sunroof, EnergySage, or SolarReviews. Those tools will combine that information with aerial views of your roof from Google Earth, Tesla Maps, or another aerial photography tool to estimate how big a PV system your home could handle, how much you could save over, say, 20 years, and your investment’s break-even point: that is, when a purchase would begin to pay off. The average homeowner who buys a solar panel system could break even in 8.7 years, EnergySage says. 

Savings and break-even estimates for the same property can be wildly different among the calculators, so consider them a starting point in your decision-making. But if you plan to sell your home before the earliest break-even point, a solar purchase probably doesn’t make sense.

If your roof is old, the answer is no—at least not until you replace it. Asphalt shingles that are 10 years old or more should be replaced before adding a solar array on top, says Ana Almerini, a spokesperson for SolarReviews. New solar panels are warrantied to last, on average, 25 years, while most roofs are warrantied for 30 years or less. If your 10-year-old roof needs to be replaced at its 30-year mark—20 years into your solar array’s lifetime—you’ll need to remove everything to reroof and then reinstall the solar system, a costly proposition.

With newer roofs, you’ll still only know for sure if a solar installation is feasible after a solar company rep checks out your roof and surrounding foliage in person. They’ll determine whether there’s too much shade or other obstacles, or the roof has problems that don’t make an installation worthwhile. That inspection costs you nothing and takes place before you sign on the dotted line. Or, If you’d rather find out whether your roof is a candidate before you shop—avoiding the calls, texts, emails, and visits to your front door you can expect from aggressive salespeople—pay a roofer for an inspection. 

Check, too, with your municipality—and homeowners’ association, if you have one—to find out about any restrictions on the type and placement of solar panel arrays. 

The most powerful savings tool for homeowners who buy their solar systems is the federal solar tax credit, available for installations through . It allows you to subtract 30 percent of the cost of buying and installing solar heating, electricity generation, and other solar home products from your federal taxes. There’s no dollar limit on those expenses; you’re entitled to that 30 percent tax break whether you spend $20,000 or more than $100,000 on costs associated with a residential solar system.

This break is available to all taxpayers for their primary or secondary residence located in the U.S. Taxpayers of any income level can take advantage of it. You can use it whether you itemize your taxes or take the standard deduction. Keep in mind, though, that the solar tax credit is available only if you purchase a solar system; if you lease one, you can’t take advantage of the credit. And if you don’t typically owe taxes, the credit isn’t useful.

You also could further your savings in these ways: 

Local and state incentives. Your state may offer additional breaks, including tax rebates or sales tax exemptions (see this state-by-state compilation from Solar.com, an online solar marketplace). Your municipality may exempt your solar system from your home’s assessed value, so your taxes don’t rise even as your home value does.

Rebates. Your electric utility, as well as certain installers and manufacturers, also may offer rebates for buying and installing a system. 

Sale of your excess electricity. In a handful of states, solar-home owners can arrange to sell their excess power to utilities. They sign up with a marketplace that assigns the excess electricity a certain number of solar renewable energy certificates (SRECs); those SRECs are then traded in a marketplace with fluctuating prices. The District of Columbia and eight states—Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—have such marketplaces. In some areas of Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, residents can participate in Ohio’s SREC marketplace.

Leasing is commonly marketed as a way to finance a solar installation for those who aren’t using cash. The benefit of leasing—usually a 20-year commitment—is that you put no money down. Your energy bills are instantly lower, based on a formula the solar provider devises. Maintenance is handled by the solar company as well. Typically you pay a set monthly amount for electricity— regardless of how much power your system produces. (In a power-purchase agreement, a lease variant, you pay for what your system produces.) 

Just be aware of the pitfalls and caveats of leasing, which make this type of financing less beneficial to homeowners than cash purchases or loans. For one, the solar panels, racks, and inverters on your roof aren’t yours, and the solar company that owns them—not you—benefits from all the available tax incentives. Interest rates can be higher than for financing you obtain yourself. Your monthly payment also can rise each year with a lease, versus a loan payment that stays constant. 

And, depending on where you live, your home could be more difficult to sell with a leased solar system in place. If the new buyer doesn’t want to continue the lease, the solar company will remove its panels and you’ll have to pay what you still owe on the lease. Buyers who agree to assume the solar lease need to report those payments as their own debt when applying for a mortgage, added to any credit card balances, student debt, and car loans they already owe. “That lease payment could throw the buyer into a higher interest rate, or not qualify them for a loan at all,” says Sandra Adomatis, a real estate appraiser in Punta Gorda, Fla., and an expert in valuing green homes with The Appraisal Institute, an industry group. 

Taking a loan from the solar company also isn’t ideal. The interest rates the solar company will charge may be higher than what you’d get by seeking an independent lender yourself. And solar dealers often tack on significant origination fees—up to 30 percent of the system’s cost, compared with 1 to 5 percent for traditional loans. “I wouldn’t use the financing from the solar company,” says Garrett Mendelsohn, founder and CEO at Solar Bootcamp, based in Palmas del Mar, Puerto Rico, which teaches solar company representatives how to sell systems virtually. “Ninety percent of the time, you’re paying a high interest rate and huge dealer fee.”

If you’ve been in your home a while, a less costly way to finance your solar investment is through a home equity loan or home equity line of credit (HELOC) or loan, borrowing off your home’s built-up value. The interest rate is likely to be lower than if you seek a personal loan for the job. And, you can deduct the interest on your federal tax returns for a major solar installation; the IRS permits such deductions when home equity is used to “substantially improve” your home.

For HELOCs and other types of loans, consult comparison sites like Bankrate, Lending Tree, and SoFi for competing interest rates and terms. New-home buyers and those refinancing also can check out Fannie Mae’s HomeStyle Energy Mortgage Program, which can help you bundle a solar loan into the new mortgage. 

After closing, keep an eye on interest rates. You can refinance when current rates, now relatively high, begin to fall. 

Solar installers are typically one-stop shops, offering you panels and inverters—and the racks that hold them—as well as installation. In addition to offering their own financing, they may sell extra warranties, monitoring, and maintenance. 

To find installers, search for “solar installer,” or input your address and other basic personal information into comparison websites like EnergySage and SolarReviews; each analyzes the quality of local providers and their products using technical measures; they both also use consumer reviews. (EnergySage doesn’t require your number, a boon if you want to avoid texts.)

The not-for-profit Consumers’ Checkbook is another source of reputable installers, providing reviews of local services in seven major metro areas—Boston, Chicago, the Delaware Valley, Puget Sound, San Francisco, the Twin Cities, and Washington, D.C. In the Bay Area—subject to California’s relatively new mandate that new, low-rise residential construction include solar photovoltaic systems—Consumers’ Checkbook has reviews on 132 solar contractors. 

Before you arrange for an in-person or Zoom consultation from companies you identify through these tools, ask providers to show proof that they’re licensed in your state and municipality to do the work where you live. Check, too, with the Better Business Bureau in your area for complaints. Confirm that the companies have been certified by the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP), a trade organization that sets standards for solar installers. Your utility company or state energy board also may list providers that meet certain quality standards. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), for instance, offers a search for solar contractors with a “Quality Solar Installers” designation. 

Neighbors with recent installations might be willing to talk to you about their experiences with solar contractors. Or, ask for input through community forums like NextDoor and the Facebook page for your community. And when you contact a company, find out how long they’ve been doing solar installations. Choose a company with several years’ installation experience, and ideally a presence in more than one state, Mendelsohn advises. He also recommends finding a company that uses its own, in-house installers.

You’ll see lots of figures and factors in a solar proposal. But there are five really worth focusing on when comparing offers.

Price per watt or kilowatt. That’s the upfront cost divided by the size of the system. The lower the cost per watt, the better the system’s value. You can use each company’s estimated cost per watt to compare proposals. “It’s like unit pricing at your supermarket.” explains Vikram Aggarwal, EnergySage CEO.

Warranties. They may differ for the workmanship, the solar panels, and the inverters—that is, the mechanisms that take the direct current (DC) that the solar panels create and convert it to alternating current (AC) electricity that our homes use. A standard solar panel warranty is 25 years, Aggarwal says. Inverter warranties range from 10 to 25 years.

Rated power. This is a measure of the system’s efficiency—that is, how much electricity it puts out under ideal conditions. Rated power of at least 400W is preferable; Aggarwal recommends 420W to 440W, because he says it’s the most efficient. The solar company should also give you a projection of how much the power production will degrade by the time the warranty expires. Solar panels’ productivity degrades at a median, 0.5 percent a year, according to the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. At the end of a typical, 25-year warranty, that translates to productivity of 87.5 percent.

Annual production. You may notice that the proposals you get from different companies show dramatically different estimates of the amount of power they can provide—from, say, 100 percent of your current needs to 125 percent or more. Why bother with all that excess power? If, say, you add an electric vehicle to your power consumption, planning for more power may be worthwhile. “If you think you’re going to buy an electric car in next four to five years, you may want to oversize your system now,” Aggarwal says. “Most installers won’t be willing to add new panels and inverters in the future.” Depending on the arrangement with your utility, you may be able to sell back the excess power, reducing your electric bill further. 

Quality of the solar equipment. You can look on EnergySage and SolarReviews for comparisons and judgments of solar panels and inverters; names like Canadian Solar, LG, and QCel show up highly rated there. For inverters, experts we talked to preferred microinverters, individual units attached to each panel, versus string inverters, which are connected to both the panels and each other like Christmas lights. As with Christmas lights, string inverters are annoyingly interdependent. “If one panel goes out, Aggarwal says, “the whole system goes out.”

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