Solar Energy World LLC

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We wanted to get an early start and it coincided with a rainy season and had some rough times digging very deep large holes for support posts. Their tractor got stuck often on the hill going up to site and had to eventually use some old rugs I was taking to dump to get it up the hill. Concrete was poured and attaching hardware was set into concrete. The foreman at time seemed to be a little unexperienced in ground units and the concrete was a bit rough in some outer edges. The panel installation onto posts was a bit off alignment at first and I had to call the office and have them reset to align the 2 units of 14 panels each so they were aligned properly. They did this immediately and all was well. The yard as a mess due to weather conditions but they brought in a lot more top soil then they were planning on, I am sure, to level the ground. This was not an extra charge for all the soil. Operation of the 6.5 kw system of 28 panels had been outstanging. Bills over the summer have ranged from $6.00 to $40 depending on weather conditions. Winter a bit more up to $80-90 if our wood stove is not keeping the heat pump off. SRECS values dropped immediately as we began making them from over $300 to around $130, but it's all good and seems to more than make up for what we are paying or at least breaking even. It was a good investment. State and Fed grants and such were received just as they stated and for the amount stated. County reimbursement is lagging and we are on a waiting list for a property tax credit. A good investment for us and good for the environment as well.

The salesman Jose was very knowledgeable. The installers did a great job.

They did a good job and managed to get it done before the end of the year; which was one of my criteria. They finished on Christmas Eve. Their pricing was fair.

We started out to just get info on SOLAR PANELS. We where contacted by five companies Solar Energy World was first then by four other companies. One gave info over the phone. Another wanted us to give them a answer right away. The fourth gave a half hearted approach. The fifth I don't even remember what they did. BRENT COTTON called and set up appointment. On the day of appointment he was running late and called and told us he was going to be half hour late, which he was less but I liked the phone call to let us know. When he arrived he came in and was dressed and acted very professional. He sat down told us about the company and himself. Then with his lap top computer he told us how the solar system worked till we understood the whole system from start to finish, which was about 45 minutes. He told us that they would handle all the paper work on permits, grants, SREC's everything that needed to be done. Brent told us to take a week and think about never pressured us to make a decision. He said that the installation would take 2 days after all paper work was done and permits obtained. When the came out to do the install the crew came out and did a wonderful job. They where so clean that when I got home from work I couldn't even tell they where here and the job was done in 2 days. On one day my mother likes to take a nap after lunch the guys on (truck 103) finished left a nice note and said sorry to leave without saying goodbye. Didn't want to wake you thanked us for everything and enjoy the sun. When the Carroll county inspector came out he said it was the best job he had ever seen. When everything was done they sent out a very nice binder containing Owners Manuel, Warranty Info, Contract and other Info, The best part of the whole thing is the system is doing what he said it would do. My electric bill has gone from $200+ down to as little as $28 and the first check for SREC sales was for $237 the second one should be about $355. Last thing I LOVE watching the electric meter going backwards. WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND BRENT COTTON AND SOLAR ENERGY WORLD AS A VERY EXCELLANT AND PROFESSIONAL COMPANY!!!

They are great. They definitely are very knowledgeable and had the best price. They are great to work with. Anytime we call them, they are right back to us.

From initial contact with Solar Energy Worlds sales person Brent Cotton to final inspection, all aspects of the process were well communicated, on-time, and seamless. This is the third phase of the process for installation and enjoyed every dealings with all. Especially Brent....Thanks for the GREAT work.

Outstanding job!!! I have referred them and they have subsequently installed systems at my Brother/Sister's house as well as my Aunt/Uncle. I contacted them after a neighbor installed a solar system. They came out to the house and spent s lot of time with me and my wife to explain the system and the capabilities. They also reviewed the solar hot water system, which I had not previously known about. They crew was able to install in a day, and was very professional. The hot water system requires a significant amount of plumbing background, which clearly is a strength of this company as well. I was amazed at the knowledge of the team and their ability to explain it to me. We really wanted to try and reduce our carbon footprint, and thought this was an easy way, while hopefully saving money on our energy bills. We couldn't believe the change in our bill, which was immediate!! We pay almost no electricity cost, and the hot water system allows us to limit our gas costs as well. In a home with 5 children (4 girls), we no longer worry about lack of hot water. They estimated the power generation of the PV solar system for us, but it has outproduced by 15% or more. I track it monthly and admit, I have become so aware of our energy usage, that it has allowed me to learn ways to cut the energy usage further. I would definitely recommend!!!

I have waited over two months to write this, because I wanted to be as objective as possible regarding our experience with this company. I wanted to "mellow out" over time so my review wouldn't sound like the ranting of a lunatic. Let me start out by saying our neighbor down the street who recommended this company had a very good experience, so it is possible that our experience was unusual or out-of-the-ordinary. I will provide a great deal of specifics, but the principle point that I wish to make is that I would not recommend this company to anyone, in spite of my commitment to solar energy. In fact, for every person we refer who contracts with this company, we receive $500. Even for the $500 for a referral, we will refer no one to this company. I would feel horribly guilty if I referred anyone to this company and they had the same bad experience we had. In fact, we had one terrible experience after another, we were directly lied to at least twice by our sales representative Brent, and we received no satisfaction from the vice president of sales, nor the company owner. AND, the first lie is going to cost us a considerable amount of money not originally planned for in our budget. 1) When we met with the salesman, we requested a design that would allow for 100% of our energy to be generated by solar. The point of this entire endeavor was to never have to pay for energy again. Brent initially gave us a design with 42 panels based on pulling a photo of our house from googlemaps. When he showed us our house on googlemaps. we told him it was NOT our house and he finally found the correct house. However, when he returned to work, he continued to base his designs, for weeks, on the wrong house. He contacted us again and told us that he had made a mistake, because of a new law requiring walkways for firefighters on rooves, and he could only give us 32 panels. Then he contacted us again and told us he suddenly found an exhaust pipe on our roof and had to come up with a third design. This was after an engineer had come out to our house to check out the physical layout. This third layout placed panels on our garage, when he had never done that before. It was at this point that we realized he had still been working off the wrong house, because the original house he was working off of had no garage. He suddenly discovered both our garage and the exhaust pipe, which had apparently materialized out of thin air. Since he had found the garage, we asked him to try to find space for as many more panels as he could. FINALLY, with design four, he came up with the plan for 35 panels. I cannot fully explain how completely frustrating this exercise was AND we were told by some engineers who installed our equipment that this was a relatively frequent event. 2) Lie 1: all state, federal, and local rebates would be received within 18 months, so we could pay off the interest-free loan. Fact: Baltimore County rebate will not be provided to us until 2018, so we will need to pay a lot of interest we had not planned to. This is a big issue. The way that solar energy is affordable to many people is through the federal, state, and local tax rebates. The company helps you to arrange for an interest-free 18 month loan. The idea is that you will receive all the rebates within this 18 month period and so can pay back the loan without accruing any interest. However, once all the paperwork is complete, we discovered that the $5,000 county rebate would not be issued until 2018. Given the number of contracts this company performs, it would be an impossibility for Brent NOT to have known that we would not receive the rebate by 2014. Nonetheless he led us to believe we would receive the rebate by 2014. This lie was significant enough that we filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. 3) Lie 2: installation would take place within 6-8 weeks. EVERY SINGLE person we spoke with said this was a physical impossibility. Installation did not take place until March 21. Something that was particularly amusing/frustrating was that at least 3 of the people installing the equipment had negative things to say about Brent in particular regarding how frequently he misled people regarding how long it took to install the equipment. Three separate people shared with us that many of their customers are dissatisfied with the entire process and complain a lot, although for whatever reason, this information never seems to show up in the independently performed evaluations, AND no one in the company seems to be supervising Brent to stop lying about installation times. 4) Brent arranged to have panels installed BEHIND a valuable bush by our house when he knew the panel had to be accessible. So the expensive bush had to be chopped down. The engineers had no idea why he did this, but they followed his instructions and they did so without notifying us first. The panels could have been placed a few feet to the right or left. I was shown Brent's instructions on the actual document they were using to install the equipment. Everyone thought it was ridiculous, but they followed the instructions instead of trying to communicate with us first to ask what we wanted to do. 5) We are especially disgusted by the fact that the vice president of sales, Geoff Mirkin, and the owner Tope Lala were of no assistance. After a number of frustrating communications with Brent, I told him I had no plans to communicate with him again, I would only communicate with his boss, Geoff. My interactions with Geoff were equally frustrating. I would get lots of "sorry," and many "yes" comments, but he really didn't do anything to make us feel any better about the company. Eventually, I told him I would only communicate with the owner, as I thought the owner was probably the person most committed to customer satisfaction. In retrospect, that was a completely incorrect assumption. When I emailed the vice president to complain about the valuable bush having to be chopped down, he said he would call me the following morning to discuss it. He never called, he just emailed me the next day to find out when we'd be paying. When I called and spoke to the owner to complain about Brent having been developing his multiple plans off of the wrong house from googlemaps, his response was "well, there are two sides to every story." When I explained that my partner had been in the room and had been the one to tell him he was working off the wrong house, he did began to listen. But his defensiveness just seemed entirely out of place for a company owner who is reputedly committed to customer satisfaction. For us, there was no evidence that any of the upper level manager/owner people cared a wit about customer satisfaction. Also, we could not get over how negative the installers were when discussing the sales crew, the complaints they received from customers, and the dissatisfaction customers had with the sales crew. Clearly sales and installation do not communicate with each other and the installation crew appears sick and tired of having to deal with the negative fallout generated by sales. The fact is, I am a very flexible person, although this review may make me sound a little off. If at ANY point during the process, people apologized, I'd have responded much more positively. If Brent had said, "I'm sorry, I made a mistake and designed the plans off the wrong house"...or if Geoff had said, "we're sorry you are having a bad experience, what can we do to improve it"....or if the first thing Tope had done was not to suggest that the problem was with me, but had said, "we are committed to your satisfaction, what can we do to ensure that we have it?", these things would have gone a long way toward me writing a positive evaluation. But we just got the impression that these people honestly don't care whether we are satisfied or not. We did receive a sincere apology from one of the installation crew. He was substituting for another worker who was out sick, which is one of the reasons why the panels were possibly intalled behind our bush. He took full responsibility for the error and apologized. It was the only sincere apology we ever received. 6) The company really pushes the idea that they are independently evaluated by an outside company. It has been over two months since installation and the outside company never contacted us for our evaluation. In fact, last month, I contacted them to find out when they would provide me with the evaluation form and they said they would "eventually" get in touch with us. It is my expectation that Solar Energy World has no plans to provide our name and contact information to the independent evaluation agency. 7) The company markets the quality of its equipment, which is guaranteed to function well for 30 years. However, once everything is installed, in the post-installation packet one receives, one is offered an annual inspection and cleaning for $500. This price seems inordinantly high for an annual inspection and cleaning if the equipment is of the quality it is supposed to be. Nothing is said about this expense prior to installation and it is a significant price for the work. Instead, this fee should be shared prior to installation. My point is, installation plus maintenance are probably going to be more than is initially shared with the customer. 8) On the plus side, the engineers and installers were very professional. They did a quick and excellent job AND our equipment is functioning as promised. Had we only had to deal with the installation crew, we would have had a great experience. While it is true that the company provides a long list of customers who have had installed equipment with whom you can communicate, there is no way of knowing how many customers who have had poor experiences are NOT on the list. We are pretty sure we will be excluded from future lists as we are sure we will never be contacted by the independent evaluation company.

We called Solar Energy World. It took them a very long time to call back. When they did they said from looking at Google Earth we would have to cut down a tree to get enough sun. We knew this would not be needed as we had been watching how much sun we would get on our roof. At any rate, we set up a date for them to come out and look. The day of the expected estimate came and no one arrived. We were told the salesman was sick and there was no one else to come. Said they would reschedule. Well here it is almost in June and we have heard nothing from them. Have given up. Can't say if the price was good, the service was good, the install was professional because they never came. Not a good way to run a business if you ask me.

They were prompt and efficient. I was utterly impressed with the high quality of work performed.

Permitting delays are very frustrating, but Solar Energy World was prompt and efficient.

From the initial meeting with the sales representative to when the system was installed, inspected, and approved to be activated, Solar Energy World, along with the leasing company, kept us informed as to what to expect during the entire process - which ran approximately 2 1/2 months. The sales rep presented two scenarios to us: 1) purchase to own and 2) 20 year lease and was able to answer all the questions we had. The installation and electrical crews arrived within the appointment time windows and did a quality and professional workmanship job. Solar Energy World took care of the necessary paperwork in working with the electrical utility and obtaining the required building permit and inspections for the work. My wife and I are very pleased with the work.

Their service was great! They cleaned up after themselves and they kept the area clean. They started before they said they would and completed the work before they said.

They were great and are really good. They work with you, are on time, and do a good job. They are clean, nice, and very friendly. They are a great company!

Solar Energy World made everything easy. They had everything installed in a couple of days and helped us submit all the paperwork for tax credits. The salesmen were knowledgeable and helped us to make the right choice in solar for our budget.

They did really excellent work, both with the panel installation and the electrical work inside the house. There were some problems that came up, but they corrected them very quickly, and communication with them was great.

We just signed a contract with Solar Energy World, so we really haven't gotten started yet. The salesman was very energetic and certainly very knowledgeable and very interested.

The experience was wonderful overall. They took care of everything; a lot of permits and grants were needed, and everything went smoothly. It was a good outfit to work with! We’re currently using them on the commercial building that I own.

It was a complex project. There is a series of steps that need to be done. All of the refunds, paperwork and metering process was handled excellently. They managed everything in a very efficient way. I am very appreciative of everything they did to make the project happen.

Prior to installation the project manager out to inspect he roof and our attic. The day they installed the panels, the went into the attic to move a few pipes to new locations and installed the panels.