SunPower Builders

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I was very pleased working with Jon to install my first solar system. He was very courteous, knowledgeable and generally on time. I always received a call if there was a change in appointment time. I looked at several different contractors and chose SunPower because they have been in the solar business since 1970 and also spent some time doing community service work helping small communities in Africa with using solar power.

Fantastic! I would recommend to anyone! Very professional and understands the business. In fact, I picked SunPower because he has been in the solar business since 1970, before anyone else even knew what solar was. Very knowledgeable and approachable.

This was a horror story practically from the outset. It lasted almost a year, and cost me many thousands in legal fees just to get this contractor to honor our contract, which I tried to cancel on several occasions. I have an exhaustive email and paper trail documenting attempts to get Mr. Costanza to cooperate with my architect and general contractor, including correspondence with my energy consultant, the lawyer I had to engage in an attempt not to lose my 50% upfront deposit, and Mr. Costanza and his legal representative. Very briefly, Sunpower was recommended to me by an acquaintance for whom they had installed a system. Having evaluated several other potential providers, Mr Costanza appeared the most knowledgeable and experienced. The solar installation was part of a much larger home rebuilding project intended to achieve carbon neutrality, and required coordination with multiple other construction activities, all of which were under the control of my general contractor. Unfortunately, Mr Costanza repeatedly refused to cooperate or to coordinate with the other construction activities, which set the project completion back significantly. One glaring error was his mismeasurement of the available roof area, which turned out to be much too small to install the required system size; this was not identified until rebuilding was well under way, and necessitated complete rebuilding of the entire south facing roof to remove 3 dormer windows, with the consequence that I then had to rebuild the entire top floor of the house, including two bedrooms and a bathroom, which was not part of my initial project scope and resulted in a very large, unplanned additional building cost. Overall, the system was installed months late, at an excess cost of at least 50% of the initial system cost (the result of the unplanned renovation of the top floor and my expenses for additional energy consultation and legal fees), all of which were entirely avoidable if Sunpower had simply acted collaboratively, as I had stipulated from the outset. The system was eventually installed and commissioned and is working mostly satisfactorily, although the peak power output produced so far (June - December 2012) barely exceeded 80% of the rated total capacity.

SunPower Builders is the greatest firm any one would every want to work with. They are 100% concerned with ecology. They are 100% professional. All their work comes in on time and bill exactly what was quoted. I couldn't possibly recommend them highly enough.

They were very responsive. The price they quoted me was around $1000 give or take. They were pretty professional and responded to my needs.

You couldn't hope to find better work than what he does. He's honest, he's extremely professional, and his work always comes in on time. I would highly recommend him to anyone who has any type of major building projects for their house. He is a green builder, and he is 100% concerned about the ecology.

I’ll start this review by stating that I am not an easy person to work for. I tend to be a do-it-yourselfer, and I hold contractors to the same standard to which I hold myself. With that in mind, know that when I say I am very pleased with Sunpower Builder’s workmanship, attention to detail, materials selection, and overall design, it’s not praise that’s easily earned. They installed a 7.4 kW rooftop photovoltaic system with a 7 kW inverter, webbox, safety switches and a utility grade meter. They were able to help me with the decision making process every step of the way right down to the broker to handle my SREC sales. They rendered my home and property and were able to give me detailed computer generated images of what various arrangements would like like when complete. They also handled all federal and state rebate paperwork, township permits, engineering structure analysis, and coordinated with Peco energy on my behalf. The equipment they installed is all top of the line. The supporting structure is aluminum with stainless steel fasteners. The cells are made by GE, and the inverter is an SMA Sunnyboy. The system has been running for one week now, and after a few initial bugs, everything seems to be running very smoothly and performing well. The initial glitches were handled quickly and professionally. I gave them a "C" for responsiveness because I had to do a lot more calling and calling back than I would have liked to get project status updates. I was never really given one point of contact and wound up speaking to a lot of different people whenever I had a question. They are a small company and this kind of thing is not uncommon in shops where the employees where many different hats. I learned late in the process that Kira Costanza is who I should have been speaking with the whole time. If you do a project with them, you'll save yourself a few headaches by only working with her, and CC'ing her on all emails. She is very on top of her game and will get back to you quickly with answers. It's also worth mentioning that SunPower is doing extensive solar work in Africa with money donated by their customers and associates. The owner, Jon, drives a biodiesel Volvo and a Honda insight. Their family has been in the solar PV business since 1972 -- long before it became fashionable. They're involved in state level renewable energy legislation and consult with representatives in Harrisburg regularly. By all appearances, they are not in the business to make a quick buck on the new government incentives. They are the real deal when it comes to green energy.