Solar States

Solar States services and work has been stellar for us and honestly was more smooth than we had anticipated.

The quote and pre-planning process was straightforward, the installation was efficient, the communication continues to be excellent, and the solar panels have been running flawlessly for 2 years so far. I wholeheartedly recommend Solar States to anyone considering going solar in the region.

Solar States installed panels on our Philly rowhouse in March 2019. We were happy with their work at every stage of the process, from the initial estimate through the installation months later. The installers were a very friendly and professional crew who communicated well and cleaned up all debris afterward. And having solar for this last year and a half has saved us a lot of money on electric bills in addition to (hopefully) lowering emissions from coal plants. Many months of the year we pay PECO only the $10 fee for being connected to the grid. In summer, our monthly electric bill has not been more than $30 (full disclosure: we don't have central air, only wall units). We're very glad we took the plunge to solar and especially that we went with Solar States for the install.

Having gone through the process of getting quotes from a couple of times from various contractors - I can say that my experience with Solar States was much more pleasant than what I recently experienced. Let me go through some of the steps with Solar States and contrast it with what I experienced tonight with a competitor. For one, we did the entire consultation online and over the phone. Two - there were no gimmicks - I received a PDF quote and there was none of price estimate flux writing on a legal pad adding up various costs going from $90K all the way down to $40K. It was a simple quote with not a lot of gimmicks in terms of trying to give me sticker shock to only unveil the actual price they were able to complete the work for. Three - The process was simple. 1/2 hour quote and no pressure. They even recommended that I might want to look at a PECO energy assessment or insulation to help save on energy costs if I wasn't ready to drop thousands of dollars on a solar project. Great advice! While I cannot speak for the overall quality of the work they do - I will speak to their professional manner. My experience in dealing with them makes me much more likely to do so in the future. My contrasting experience tonight compels me to give Solar States a shout-out for not wasting a bunch of time on a high-pressure sales pitch and just being professional and addressing my request for a quote and keeping things short, sweet, and simple. The fact that they weren't trying to pressure me or use sticker-shock leads me to believe they are probably a better bet.

Love Solar States. After investigating five solar installers, I chose them even though they were not the lowest bid. I was willing to pay a little extra because they are a Philadelphia based B-corp. The references were perfect and they've been doing this for a long time. My salesperson, Dan, is a true expert in solar and answered all our questions and kept me informed over the whole project. TIP: if you can afford it, finance it yourself using a home equity loan. That gives you the best payback. My neighbor (who went with another solar supplier) was told by PECO that they could only install enough solar panels to meet about 60% of their annual usage due to a system limitation. Since we're on the same circuit, that worried me! But Solar States has direct contacts at PECO and they resolved the issue for me and my neighbor (still using the other company). Now we both have 100%+ of our annual usage generated by the sun! When it finally came time to do the install, they were so quick. Just two days! Patrick was the lead and he really worked his butt off to make sure that everything was installed properly and looks great. The whole crew was super nice and they cleaned up everything on the way out. We hope to add a Powerwall next--if Tesla will ever deliver it. It's been my only disappointment and that's outside of Solar States control. Soon, I hope.

We have had a generally poor experience with Solar States. We waited over a year from our contract signing date to finally getting the project under way, and the communication has been quite poor and/or ineffective throughout. We were left in the dark for months at the time as to what the extensive delay was due to, when in the background there was a key decision point that we were not made aware of, and the company just went ahead with their decision (taking on a long, drawn out fight with Peco that we would have declined to do). If we had known about this, we would have decided half a year ago not to contest Peco's decision and ended up with the same end result that we have now. After the system was online, I noticed that there were clear discrepancies in the data readings from the installed system and what was being metered by Peco. I raised my concerns multiple times over email over the course of several months, and received stock replies from a staff member that didn't take my concerns seriously, and honestly were patronizing in tone. After repeated frustrations in getting an adequate response from Solar States, I contacted the 3rd party company that makes the monitoring equipment and software (Enlighten) and received excellent customer service - they quickly diagnosed that there was indeed a problem with how our system was set up by Solar States and was able to rectify the issue remotely in mere minutes; unfortunately, several months of valuable data were lost because our system was not installed correctly and Solar States staff repeatedly failed to address my concerns. Finally, it was discovered that one of our panels is vastly underperforming because of a hard shadow from our chimney for much of the day. This issue was never communicated to us during the install, and in general there was little to no communication with the installers, which led to glaring errors that ultimately inconsiderate of the end user (for instance, hooking our solar up to an electricity panel different than our HVAC system, the single biggest user of electricity in our home). I have given multiple opportunities for the company to rectify the aforementioned concerns, but they have generally replied with disinterest and shirking of responsibility - for instance - refusing to move the underperforming panel because they state they only guarantee electricity production of an entire array and not any given panel. I almost never write reviews and almost never write negative ones, because of the potential damage it can do to a business, but I simply can't in my good conscience avoid expressing what a frustrating experience we have had with this company.

Solar States came to the rescue after my solar installer went bankrupt. They responded quickly and resolved my problem within a short amount of time. Highly recommend.

Friendly, efficient. Always wanted to install solar-they made it easy.

Solar States walked me through the process each step of the way from the panel installation to the electric and building inspections and PECO evaluations that enabled the system to operate. Solar States was easy to contact by email or phone, and always responded quickly to questions.

Solar States has helped us monitor our solar system since the previous company we had doing this stopped operating. They are attentive to our system and let us know quickly when there's a problem. We're grateful for their support and expertise.