New member from Central California Coast.

[John Bon]

Hi all. My name is John and I live in San Luis Obispo County, California. I am midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles and 10 miles inland from the beach. SunWork did my installation with the help of several volunteers including myself. It was a great experience, I learned a lot and found it not too technically difficult. Project manager, Bryan, was great about demostrating the steps we, the crew followed up on. SunWork http://sunwork.org/ is a non-profit who specializes in helping low energy users get a PV system for about 30% less than traditional installers.
Since I am all electric, we were able to install a 4.640 kilowatt system consisting of 16 Rec Solar REC-290-TP2 solar panels roof mounted with SolarEdge Optimizers and a SolarEdge SE6000H-US inverter.
My average monthly electric bill is $130. This system should produce just a tad more than that.

John Bon

[John Bon]

In addition, I am on a grid-tied system with PG&E. Legfacy Time-of-use plan with top tier from 1:00 to 7:00 P.M.

[J.P.M.]

So what's "30 % less" ? That is, what did you pay for the system before fed. tax credit ? That's what the co. blurbs say. Broad claims need strong support.

Nice to have volunteers who work for nothing.

At prices 30% less than common (according to the co. blurb), I bet Sunwork must be swamped with work.

Any pre work done on sizing for max. cost effectiveness ? Just wondering.

Another question: Why would a company market to low energy users ? I'd wonder if the planet would be better off if marketing and installation was to high high energy users before the frugal. I bet the volunteer experience would be about the same in terms of knowledge gained, maybe better.

Nice exclusion to sell to low energy users who own/charge an EV. Bet there's a lot of those types of users around. Seems to me many/most low energy users have that attribute for a reason - THEY'RE POOR!! They don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out much less play around with treehugger toys like PV or EV's. In the end, I bet most EV users are not poor.

The co. also does a nice job of cherry picking the roofs they'll work on. Guess everyone (including low energy users it would seem) with roofs that don't fit such narrow criteria can only submit to getting screwed by the regular vendors. A real marketing coup there. Too bad. So sad.

Maybe if the potential customers who are low energy users turned into volunteers, they could learn enough to DIY their own PV and save still more on installation. Or, alternately, they could spend the time learning more about conservation and use reduction and get more bang for their (limited) buck than fooling around with PV.

I've seen similar business models before. Usually, or at least often, all was not as much sweetness and light as the company would like to project, and often run by disingenuous opportunists who invented a job for themselves and called it a business, non profit or otherwise, by marketing to the ignorant because they (the opportunists) can't hold down a real job.

To those reading this thread and thinking about PV, Caveat Emptor.

Take what you want of the above. Scrap the rest.

[John Bon]

Hi J.P.M. My 4.64 system will cost just less than $11,000 before tax deduction. A lot of conduit work as my 16 panels are on 4 different roof sections. That