(303) 447-0300
Publish Date: November 18th, 2024
Recently, we shared a post to help you avoid solar scams and choose a reputable installer to protect your investment. In this companion blog, we’ll pull back the curtain on a solar panel quote and the solar proposal process to show you how you can be sure that the quote you’re getting is transparent and makes sense for your home – and how to know if it doesn’t.
What you’re looking for is a company who puts your goals first, making them a higher priority than making a single sale. At Namaste Solar, propagating the responsible use of solar energy and pioneering conscientious business practices is literally part of our mission. Our commitment to this shows in the approach of our non-commissioned salespeople and our solar proposals. This customer-first approach isn’t the norm in the industry, and it certainly isn’t the norm for big, national solar companies.
How Other Companies Often Overpromise and Underdeliver
A lot of solar companies are entirely motivated by making the sale. And they’ll do anything to reach that goal.
One common practice in the industry is to provide initial quotes that are based on formulaic estimates rather than a system specifically and professionally designed for your home. Since most of these companies are incentivizing their team to sell the most panels, they’ll give you a design with solar panels on any available roof surface.
We’ve seen time and again that big, national companies often manipulate the shade report to show a system that will produce more than it will. They’re also likely to put panels in places that don’t make sense. Their sales reps giving the quote often are not professional design specialists, so the designs aren’t fully baked.
In fact, this opaque behavior can be intentional for some companies. It’s not uncommon for a company to give a generic quote that hasn’t been designed for your home that looks super appealing because it’s showing a really, really low price.
But since they haven’t done due diligence to design based on your home, customers are often hit with change orders in the thousands of dollars after the contract has been signed and an actual design is created. For customers wanting to produce clean energy and save money, this can be devastating.
A Proper Shade Analysis Protects Your Investment
A shade analysis on a solar panel quote shows an irradiance map, which is a measurement of kWh/m2/year, of your roof and how environmental factors like trees or other buildings impact the shade your roof gets.
An irradiance map in Aurora, the software our sales team uses
A thorough and accurate shade analysis ensures your solar panels are placed on your roof in a location and orientation that will maximize sunlight and production. And having a shade analysis done before you sign a contract ensures that the system you’re agreeing to will function in the way you’re expecting it to.
When it comes to a shade analysis report from other companies, they often won’t show the colored irradiance map to the customer. An inaccurate or manipulated one can show more sun – and higher production potential – where it doesn’t exist on your roof. And some won’t include a shade analysis at all. Agreeing to a system without this step is a surefire way to experience lower production, installation holdups, and higher than expected electricity costs.
National Companies Don’t Know Local Jurisdiction Requirements
Another disadvantage to big, national companies is their lack of knowledge when it comes to jurisdictional requirements. These requirements impact solar design and installation. If a company isn’t aware of them, they can end up designing, and even installing, systems that don’t fit the regulations. “Sometimes the other solar companies will move forward with installation before they get all the approvals,” said Tristan, one of our noncommissioned sales and design experts. “And then they can't get permission to turn the system on. So, the customer is paying a bill but the system is totally nonfunctional. Our service department hears of this all the time.” As a local Front Range Colorado solar installer, our 20 years in business means that we know the local requirements in and out.
Other Companies Cut Costs – And Effectiveness – With Old Equipment
Some customers come to us showing that a different company gave them a solar proposal with more solar panels that will cost them less. In these instances, the equipment is often the culprit. “Customers come in and they’ll say, ‘Well, I’ve got this other proposal. They’re saying they can fit so many more solar panels and it’s going to cost less than you,” shared Tristan. “And, in these cases, I always ask what equipment they’re being quoted first.”
It’s common for companies to overorder panels for a project and then sell them to a re-seller for pennies on the dollar. And then other companies scoop up the secondhand panels and sell them as new. They often haven’t been used or installed but they’re an old product, often with a lower production quality than panels Namaste Solar offers.
Jamie Hays, one of our noncommissioned sales and design experts, spoke to this process. He was working on a solar proposal for a customer, who asked him to review a solar panel quote from another installer. Jamie noticed that she was being quoted inferior, old panels. “We sell 420 watt panels. And this quote had 385 watt panels. I’ve been working here almost two years and have never seen panels with that low of production. And there’s no way those panels were going to create more power than the 420s, no matter what the quote said,” shared Jamie. Because of our radical transparency, he was able to share this with the customer to help her make an educated decision.
An example of Namaste Solar's equipment list that's included in your proposal - other companies can skimp here.
The One Tool You Can Use to Gauge A Company’s Intentions
All in all, there are a lot of tricks that some other solar companies pull on their customers. And so many of them fly under the radar, meaning that as an average consumer, it’s hard to spot them.
How the company responds to your questions is one way to gauge their intentions. Asking about the specifics of your system, for a breakdown of the shading analysis, how the price is decided, which equipment is used, and more, are all well within your rights as a customer. And if the company is vague, misleading, or pushy, those are all red flags.
So, now that you’ve got an idea of what some of the tricks are, let’s look at what a proposal done right and transparently looks like.
Our Process Makes the Difference
When you enter the Namaste Solar quoting process, things look and feel a lot different than they do at other companies.
Your First Steps in the Namaste Solar Quoting and Proposal Process
As a first stop, you’ll speak with a member of our Residential Sales Support team. They’ll chat with you to get an idea of your needs and goals, including solar, battery backup, EV chargers and more. In order to provide an accurate solar proposal our designers need to model your past and forecasted electrical usage. The support team will collect the name of your utility company and your last 12 months of kilowatt-hours. For further accuracy, we gather photos of your electrical system at your home so we fully understand the electrical setup. Your system is then designed with this knowledge.
We ask for these things up front so that we know the entire scope of work and you know the expected cost. Doing our due diligence on the front end allows us to sell you a system that’s custom designed for your home at a price you agree to. It significantly decreases the amount of change orders we put in and surprise cost changes that customers experience.
Next, you’re introduced to one of our non-commissioned sales and design specialists. By non-commissioned, we mean that our sales and design experts are paid strictly by a salary. They don’t get paid per sale or by the size of the project they sell. If you don’t buy from them, they’ll still get paid. This gives the salesperson the power to tell you if your home isn’t an ideal candidate for solar and that’s something that other companies won’t do. As Jamie puts it, “Non-commissioned promotes being people-centered. It creates a collaborative team effort to produce the best results for the customer.”
Your Unique Design
Our salespeople are our designers. So, before you even meet your salesperson, they’ll use specialized tools to take a look at your home and create a preliminary design. These tools are incredibly effective and accurate when it comes to remote mapping. And the satellite images are updated every six months, making them much more up to date than a consumer-facing product like Google maps.
Some people want a site visit from us and if that’s the case, we’ll accommodate that. But these remote tools combined with information shared by the homeowner give our salespeople better predictive capabilities than any tool they could bring on site.
When preparing your design, your salesperson will do a complete shade analysis to determine where your solar panels will fit and have the highest production.
An example of the production graph included in Namaste Solar's proposals
You’re In the Driver’s Seat
Throughout this process, you’re in the driver’s seat. You’ll be given space and time to ask any and every question you have; no pressure to make a fast decision. To move forward with your installation, you’ll sign your purchase agreement. But if you feel like you need more time or more answers, you’re empowered to take that. We’ll be here, as your solar advocates, whichever path you choose.
Go Solar with a Company that Puts Your Goals First
Like any company, our operational structure and longevity is supported by being profitable. But our purpose is well beyond that. To us, success in this industry means pioneering the responsible use of solar energy and bringing holistic wealth to our communities. We’ve unfortunately seen the negative impact on homeowners each time a sale is put above their interests, and with this action, the solar industry’s reputation suffers.
Our priorities make a difference for customers exploring their solar options. And this all starts with the solar proposal. If you’ve ever thought about what solar could look like for your home but didn’t want to deal with the pushy sales tactics, now you know you have a trusted source in solar. To get started with the solar panel quote process with us, click the button below.
