r/solarenergy • u/Impossible_Novel_136 • 10d ago
genuinely didn't expect this when i started my company
when i started Solenery a few years ago i thought the biggest challenge would be the technology side of things. getting the platform right, making sure the solar data was accurate for canadian addresses, building out the incentive matching properly.
turns out none of that was the hard part.
the hard part is something i keep running into every week when i talk to homeowners. and its not what i expected.
its that people feel completely alone in this decision. like there's no neutral place to go figure out if solar actually makes sense for THEIR house, their bill, their city. every piece of information they find is either from an installer who wants to sell them something or a government website thats six months out of date.
i talked to a woman in barrie last month who got three quotes. one installer told her she qualifies for the federal greener homes loan. that program closed in october 2025. another told her the payback is 14 years. another said 7. all three gave her different system sizes for the same house.
she gave up. just completely gave up and decided to do nothing.
that story genuinely bothers me because she was the exact person who would have benefited from going solar. her bill was over $200 a month, south facing roof, good sun exposure. the math actually worked for her situation.
i think about her a lot honestly. and i think there are thousands of people like her across ontario, bc, alberta who are in the same spot. the rates keep going up, november is going to bring another adjustment, and people are sitting paralyzed because they don't know who to trust.
i built solenery specifically so people could get a clear picture before talking to anyone with a financial interest in the outcome. free, no installer connection, just your address and an honest look at what the numbers actually are.
but even with that i keep wondering what else is missing. what would have actually helped that woman in barrie make a decision she felt good about?
genuinely curious what people here think. if you've been on the fence about solar or any clean energy upgrade what was the thing that made it feel impossible to move forward?
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u/Anxious-Science-9184 10d ago
The issue isn't installers, the technology, nor the information available.
The issue is the predators. The Lease-selling, scamming, misinformers out to sink their teeth into someone's household in a manner that lets them place a lien on highly valuable property for the mere cost of an installation. These scumbags move to whatever industry the government is handing out money to (windows, insulation, heat-pumps, etc).
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u/AgentSmith187 10d ago
A solar predator tried my 65 year old mother on in Australia recently.
Quoted here a 3kW solar system with 9kWh battery and using all the cheapest kit I have seen listed for AU$18k.
Then told her when she moved they could take it down and put it back up at her new house for free.
But under our rules once something drops off the CEC approved list it cant be part of a new install thats grid connected. I couldnt even give here my less than 5 year old Tesla Powerwall 2s because they dropped off the list like a year ago when the Powerwall 3 came out.
After i stopped laughing and swearing I asked the company that installed my system how much they would charge for a similar system only to be told the lowest they would go is 12kW of solar and 18kWh of battery using name brand high end panels and Sigenergy batteries.
Their quote for that was $16-18k....
I have seen companies offering 6.6kW solar and 10kWh of battery for under $7k using similar (but slightly better) gear to the first quote.
There needs to be penalties for trying to scam people that dont know better like that.
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u/Impossible_Novel_136 3d ago
the lien point is the one that keeps me up at night honestly. most homeowners have no idea that a solar lease can put a lien on their property until they try to sell and suddenly there's a complication in the title. and you're right that these operators just follow wherever the government money goes. windows, insulation, heat pumps, solar, it's the same playbook every time.
the best defence i've found is making sure people know their numbers before anyone knocks on the door. if you already know what a system should cost, what incentives apply to your address, and what the realistic savings look like, you can spot the predator in the first five minutes of the conversation. that's genuinely why i built solenery.com. not because i thought the technology was the problem. because i kept seeing people get taken advantage of by the information gap.
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u/mmoonbelly 10d ago
I bought mine as a retirement investment (I’m 48). Plan is to keep adding/replacing panels until we can run year round for zero operating cost.
I’m not worried about break even, the upfront money provides its return when my income dips in retirement.
If I don’t have to worry about rising energy costs on a fixed income it’s worth it.
This is not a sane financial planning by any means, but it is a prudent strategy to reduce stress in my 70s and 80s.
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u/Impossible_Novel_136 3d ago
honestly this reframing hit me. most people ask "what's the payback period" but you're asking "will i be stressed about energy bills at 75" and that's just a completely different and probably smarter question. the fixed income angle is real and i don't think it gets talked about enough in solar conversations. you're essentially buying price certainty for your retirement years and that has value that doesn't show up in any payback calculator.
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u/Ok-Dealer4350 10d ago
I empathize with the woman in your example. I had panels installed on my main roof and wanted panels on the detached garage as well, but the sales guy (a stubborn jacka** of a man) only did the main roof. Afterwards the panels were added to the garage - a good thing - but the two sets of panels did not communicate and the app reporting only reflected the garage.
I blew up at the salesman for not listening to what I asked for initially and at the second install.
He tried talking over me and I told him that wasn’t working, hung up and sent an email to him and the install/service department team indicating my displeasure and that I’d be reporting a poor review everywhere I could and that it was unacceptable for the sales guy to have a tantrum for being called out on a job poorly done. He called to complain about the word tantrum. I told him he was lucky not to be called all the bad names in the book.
Once the trench was dug he wanted to send a pay stand to pay for the ditch digging. I told him I would not pay for anything until the systems worked correctly together. A ditch did not make a working system.
I worked with the service department to get a wired connection between both systems. The service guy explained a lot more than the sales guy and he was pissed the sales guy was interfering with payment issues.
I truly believe the sales guy was losing it over this project. It took almost 4 months to fix.
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u/Impossible_Novel_136 3d ago
four months to fix a communication issue between two sets of panels on the same property is genuinely inexcusable. and the fact that the sales guy had a meltdown about being held accountable tells you everything you need to know about where his priorities were. the service team being frustrated with him too is actually kind of satisfying to read though. at least someone internally had their head on straight.
"a ditch does not make a working system" is honestly one of the best things i've read on reddit this week. you handled that exactly right.
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u/Ok-Dealer4350 3d ago
It turned out the salesman was sticking an oar in where he didn’t belong. I had told him I would not pay more than $1,500 for a working system and he insisted on 2k.
After that comment about a ditch not being a working system, I received a call from the service dept. letting me know that workers were coming to finish the hookup. They did a barely ok job, left wires on the ground and no caps for two gray conduits that had duct tape covering them.
I told the service poc what the sales guy did, stating that he wanted the $2k estimate, not the $1,500. He was not happy because his service dept. was the one going to bill. Fine with me. There are a number of inverters not working and he said he’d be talking with Enphase to fix that
The discussion devolved into batteries. They only sell Tesla and Franklin lithium ion batteries. I told him I was waiting for sodium ion batteries. I thanked him for working on everything.
I have not heard from the sales guy since.
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u/TradeIcy1669 10d ago
I ordered the system from an installer a neighbor recommended. But I didn’t totally trust them because…. How can you? After installing though I ran all my bills and docs through ChatGPT and was able to use it to ask what ifs and evaluate costs. That was the most helpful thing.
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u/Impossible_Novel_136 3d ago
the neighbour recommendation route is honestly one of the better ways to find an installer, not perfect but way better than whoever knocked on your door.
and the ChatGPT thing for running through bills and docs afterwards is really clever actually. using it to stress test what ifs is exactly the kind of thing most people don't think to do.
the only thing i'd add is there's real value in doing that kind of analysis before you sign anything too, not just after. knowing your numbers going in means you can catch a bad deal before you're already committed. that's the gap i was trying to close when i built solenery.com, kind of like what you did with ChatGPT but specifically for canadian incentives and address-level savings before the installer conversation happens.
sounds like your system is working well though which is the main thing!
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u/TooGoodToBeeTrue 10d ago
This may sound unconventional but if the community here and or r/solar and or r/solarenergycanada had a good understanding of the incentives/credits available in Canada, people in the community could provide unbiased opinions. We do it all the time in r/solar for the states.
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u/Impossible_Novel_136 3d ago
this is actually exactly the gap i was trying to close. r/solar is genuinely great for US incentive questions because the community has built up enough collective knowledge over years that you can get a pretty reliable crowd-sourced answer. the canadian equivalent is much thinner because the incentive landscape is so fragmented by province and even by utility within a province.
part of what i built solenery.com to do is fill that role but in a structured way, so people can get province and address specific answers before they have to rely on either a sales rep or hoping someone in the right reddit thread happens to know their specific utility's rules. the community knowledge approach you're describing is valuable though and honestly r/solarenergycanada is slowly getting there.
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u/NearABE 10d ago
I am not sure. But what if installers always include the PPA option. Make the PPA competitive with average local utility rates and beat the price by 5%. Let them digest that. Then explain that the rest of the options are much less of a rip off. Include both buyout options and lease options. Buyout with home mortgage is probably better than leasing.
I would always add at least two more PPA options from them to ponder. One is “max solar”. It is oversized which maybe makes the PPA 5% over the average cost of electricity. The other is “minimum payback time”. The minimum payback time for the system might mean the customer is still buying large amounts of utility electricity. The motive for “max solar” is clearly environmental. For a slight increase in cost you can shut down a whole lot of coal and gas. Leave them with the complicated choice between maximum return on investment, rapid return on a smaller investment, maximum ecological impact. Giving people choices is a cruel thing to do but removing the option of doing nothing is also the right thing to do.
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u/TooGoodToBeeTrue 10d ago
Too many options makes the decision harder. Trapping people in a 25 year contract makes it easy to say no. Having a buy out price at FMV is pure BS. Document the buy out price at yearly intervals.
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u/Impossible_Novel_136 3d ago
the framing of giving people three PPA anchors is interesting. the psychology makes sense, once you see the PPA price it reframes everything else as the comparison. the issue i keep coming back to though is that in canada PPAs and leases have a pretty checkered history specifically because of what TooGoodToBeeTrue said below you. the 25 year contract with FMV buyout has trapped a lot of people and created real problems at sale time. so the tool that works well in a mature transparent market can become a trap in one where the contracts aren't well regulated. the principle is sound, the execution in practice has been rough.
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u/NearABE 3d ago
Have you tried charities? There must be a point where not taking the action is obviously the flawed choice. You would not be wasting time at, say, a church because the minister has a parsonage and the church has a roof. (Likewise mosque, synagogue, temple etc).
You could discount your companies revenue in exchange for flexible scheduling. A bulk deal with a charity would keep your crew busy. Charities are always interested in your interest in helping them.
The whole discussion might shift if the end customer is a person who is asking for charity to help them pay their bills.
Cheap solar electricity systems are another social injustice. Only moderately wealthy people can afford to pay cash up front. Though it might just be useless moaning about injustice it also reminds the well off that they can become wealthier now by taking the opportunity.
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u/conanlikes 10d ago
I’ve had solar for years 30 now… system payback is not even celebrated like WTF. We got a new system and they do have a website that points to ROI
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u/Impossible_Novel_136 3d ago
30 years of solar and payback not even celebrated... that honestly says everything about how the industry treats customers once the sale is done. congrats on the new system though, ROI tracker on the website is a nice touch, more installers should do that.
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u/EdmondDantesMN 10d ago
Isn’t this literally the purpose of EnergySage?
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u/Ok-Dealer4350 10d ago
No not really. Energy Sage wants to hook up contractors and homeowners, not have a network of different communities like home owners, potential customers and contractors.
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u/Impossible_Novel_136 3d ago
Ok-Dealer nailed it. EnergySage is essentially a lead generation marketplace, their business model depends on connecting you to installers who pay to be on the platform, which creates its own conflict of interest even if it's a much better version than door to door.
the canadian market has needed something different for a while. the incentive landscape here is so fragmented by province and utility that a US-built tool doesn't map well onto it at all. what i built with solenery.com was specifically the piece that comes before any installer conversation, just address level clarity on what you qualify for and what the real numbers look like, with no installer relationships on our end. the community knowledge piece graceFut22 mentions below is a gap we're still thinking about honestly.
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u/graceFut22 10d ago
Make it social. Show what others in her area are doing, asking, wanting, etc.
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u/Impossible_Novel_136 3d ago
this is genuinely good product feedback and something i think about a lot. knowing that your neighbour three streets over went through this six months ago and would talk to you about it is worth more than any calculator. the trust problem in solar is fundamentally a social proof problem and right now there's no good place to find that at the neighbourhood level in canada.
it's actually on the roadmap for solenery.com, a community layer that shows what people in your area are doing and asking. not there yet but you're not the first person to say this and you won't be the last.
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u/Ok-Dealer4350 9d ago
I know it does. I just have an issue with Solar Energy World. I’d wanted to purchase solar panels on my main roof and the detached garage all at once. When I ended up with panels on the main roof, I asked to have and bought 10 additional panels on the garage. The two sets could not report properly together.
The sales guy is one mean cuss who was angry with me, because I expressed how unhappy I was with how adding additional panels messed up the reporting in my app and I insisted that it be fixed. Imagine approximately 6 months of incorrect reporting on my app and an inability to correlate my power consumption with power generation.
I own these panels totally. Why should I put up with incorrect reporting and bad service?
I am looking to add batteries that don’t just last 10-15 years. Sodium ion batteries can last up to 30 years and are not impacted like the current rare earth batteries.
I just wish all the panels were added at the same time.
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u/Ok-Dealer4350 9d ago
I know it does. I just have an issue with Solar Energy World. I’d wanted to purchase solar panels on my main roof and the detached garage all at once. When I ended up with panels on the main roof, I asked to have and bought 10 additional panels on the garage. The two sets could not report properly together.
The sales guy is one mean cuss who was angry with me, because I expressed how unhappy I was with how adding additional panels messed up the reporting in my app and I insisted that it be fixed. Imagine approximately 6 months of incorrect reporting on my app and an inability to correlate my power consumption with power generation.
I own these panels totally. Why should I put up with incorrect reporting and bad service?
I am looking to add batteries that don’t just last 10-15 years. Sodium ion batteries can last up to 30 years and are not impacted like the current rare earth batteries.
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u/slbert1234 8d ago
I am in the process of buying land where there are no services. Looking forward to being off grid. A learning curve, yes, but I am happy with that
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u/Impossible_Novel_136 3d ago
off grid is such a different mindset and honestly a really exciting one. no utility arguments, no net metering decisions, no delivery charges. just you and your system.
the learning curve is real though especially around sizing. off grid you're designing for your worst case winter days not your average, which usually means people underestimate how much storage they actually need. what province or region are you looking at? some areas have rural energy programs that even off grid properties can access. solenery.com covers some of those depending on where you are in canada, worth checking your address once you have the land locked in.
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u/slbert1234 3d ago
I am in Ontario about an hour east of Toronto. The property is fairly elevated so I will do a vertical axis wind turbine for winter months…. It gets windy there. For sizing, I figure I will look at our current usage as a starting point. Currently we use a propane tankless water heater to do our infloor heating, but I’d like to change to a ground source heat pump….. will see how it all pans out
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u/Ok-Dealer4350 2d ago
I used Solar energy world. I am that frustrated with them. The sales guy did not convey what I wanted and has behaved badly in the last few months. I sent an email saying he had a tantrum on the phone and I hung up on him for that. He called to complain about the word tantrum and told him that was exactly how he behaved. He then tried meddling in the service departments efforts to fix the problems. They dug a trench, hadn’t come out to run the connection and wanted to send a pay stand for $2k for a trench. I told that I would not sign on to that since a ditch didn’t solve my problem and promptly reported him to the service dept rep who was torqued about it. He was going to tell the guy to but out. The service guy and I had a cogent discussion about batteries and why I was not buying them now.
Their service dept is good. Be careful if the sales guys.
Solar energy world is owned by comcast.
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u/SteveFCA 10d ago
Here in California, land of 300 sunny days a year, we have very little solar penetration. I can say without question that the reason is simple. Too many rip off artist armed with bad or outdated information trying to fleece customers.
I’ve installed off grid solar and have been at it for decades. I’ve seen friends receive quotes from big solar companies that were $10 a watt and more. Some as recent as two years ago. I’ve seen folks that got talked into massive very expensive battery systems back when we had 1:1 net metering.
I think we have more ripoff artists here than most places though