Alter Systems

Had a really good experience with them. 1) Free quote. Pretty standard these days, all they need is your address and 12 months of PG&E bills. No pressure sales pitch. Good explanation of all the different options. Javier was great. They apparently started out as a solar wholesaler, but found a lot of demand for installation as well. Very competitive pricing! 2) Flexible. They recommended a certain type of panel, but I wanted to go in a different direction (buy American!) and they were able to obtain the panels that I wanted. 3) Fast install! They handled all the permits. They were on our roof within 4 weeks of signing the contract, and were done in another week. The two other installers I talked to ranged from 3 months to 9 months!! 4) Quality was great. I watched a good bit of the install, and the guys did a bang-up job. 5) Communication has been awesome. My emails get a response usually within hours. This is a small company run by three brothers that has been around since 2004. My wife had concerns about going with a smaller company, as she wanted to make sure the company we went with was still around to help us service the panels 10-20 years down the road. What I learned was that a) solar panels have no moving parts and generally last decades with a small expected degradation in production over time (~2%/year), and b) the solar panel manufacturer is the one on the hook for any problems. Companies like Solar City that guarantee a certain amount of production are just piggybacking off the manufacturer's warranty, with no liability on their part (it's all marketing!!).