Solar Energy of Illinois

We were totally scammed by this company, Solar Energy of Illinois! They caused a house fire during installation of a backup system. We had paid them $35,000 and they left and never came back to complete the job. We were on the phone or emailing continuously to no avail. When we had We- Energy come in and other installers they found multiple code violations and only a few of our 40 panels were even connected to the system! One panel was not even secured down and flew off during a wind, damaging another panel. It's been almost a year of nightmares and finally we are turning to an attorney to try and help us recover what they took from us. We are so unhappy with this company and their ways of doing business. We are going on 70 years old and took our retirement money and invested it in this solar system. Now with $35,000 hanging in their pockets, we still are trying to get a working system up and running. So very sad! If this company comes across and refunds what they took from us, we will edit this and at least say they have made things right with us.

We are happy with the panels we installed and with the service we received from Solar Energy. But if you are looking for a perfect contractor in this field you are not going to find one. If you want to know would we choose Solar Energy again, the answer is definitely yes. So this review should be seen as very positive in context. Of all the firms we worked with, Solar Energy of Illinois was the best and the easiest to work with. To begin with, it was very hard to get anyone else to give us a quote. The communication by the folks running the City of Chicago's group buy was abysmal. That made it impossible for us to work with them or determine whether they were trustworthy. The availability and helpfulness of James Lampasona, our Solar Energy salesperson, won us over in the end. He didn't pressure us and he answered every question we had when we asked it. Once we had gone through all the paperwork--and there is a lot of it! the installation was quick and unobtrusive and there were no hitches in the process. James was willing to come over numerous times to help with completing forms and he remains easily available and willing to help now months after the panels were installed. Having said that, there are two things we wish were a little different. First, we had a great quote from Solar Energy--about $1000 less than the City of Chicago group buy. It wasn't till shortly before installation that we discovered that while Solar Energy was offering us top of the line US made panels, they were going to install a less than ideal inverter (not the top of the line Enphase micro-inverters which invert each panel separately so there is no loss of power from partially shaded arrays). We discovered this through a conversation with Juhl Solar--an official contractor for the City of Chicago's group buy--when we were comparing bids and they asked us exactly what our equipment was. James immediately offered to change the bid for another $1,000 to get the Enphase inverters. In the end, Solar Energy cost us the same as the Chicago group buy for a more or less identical system. So no harm no foul, but we would have ended up producing less power with the original inverters and we weren't savvy enough to know the difference. Second, after installation, we discovered that Integrys (our electric provider) had not carried out some orders for us and we were not being net metetred. We are not sure we were compensated for the tiny bit of power we generated from Nov. - Jan. A matter of perhaps $30. We had to discover that error ourselves and it was only luck that allowed me to find it before we lost a lot of revenue. A suggestion for Solar Energy in future deals is to follow up to make sure that power is actually being metered and the whole billing part is working out.

Pricing and installation were reasonable, however after sale service was extremetly poor. Took 6 months to get the system operating after install. While still under warranty, 10 of 44 panels stopped working. The wanted $8,500 to fix an in-warranty problem. I offered $8,000 and they refused. I asked them to do an in-warranty fix and they said manufacturer would not honor warranty. I called the manufacturer directly and got the new parts in a matter of days. After 5 months of back and forth and 2 visits by them, I am down to 2 panels not working and they refuse to be of any further assistance. I will have to connect with a different provider.