Diamond Certified Video Reports

Got Watts Electric, Solar & HVAC in 5 Useful Answers

• Play from Beginning
• What are the handful of questions shoppers should be asking companies in your industry before they b
• What makes your company different from the other companies in your industry?
• Are Batteries a Good Fit for my Solar Project?
• What Should a Customer Look for on a Solar Quote?
• What is Electrification and What are the Benefits?

Got Watts Electric, Solar & HVAC - Diamond Certified 5 Useful Answers - video transcript

So, one of the big questions is: is the contractor licensed to do the work that they are proposing? A big way to check this is going to the CSLB website and seeing what licenses they carry and if they have any workers' comp insurance. A lot of issues currently are companies popping up saying they are selling customers solar, but they're actually not a licensed contracting firm. Those companies will then take the project and pair it with the lowest bidding contractor to perform the solar work. You can find this on the CSL website—look up the company name, whoever you're talking with, and see if they carry a license. Do they carry a license in solar, HVAC, or electrical? If you're talking to a sales rep, you can also find their information on the CSL website. The big difference is we do solar, electrical, and HVAC in-house, and we don’t use subcontractors. This allows us to look at your project from all aspects necessary to bring it to completion and create a happy customer. One of the main issues with solar is: do I have an electrical system that will sustain the solar or battery? And the same question on the HVAC side. We're able to handle those internally, address them before we have any change orders or any significant issues with the project, and adjust accordingly. Well, there are really two prime functions for a battery: keeping the lights on and then rate arbitrage, or leveraging your morning production to be discharged in the evening. A big question to ask yourself is: do you need to keep the lights on during a power outage? How often do you have power outages? Did you experience the PSPS events that PG&E had last year? Any high wind situations where a telephone pole maybe fell down in the neighborhood and you lost power? You know, a battery can keep the lights and refrigerators on during a power outage, as well as any equipment like a CPAP machine or any medical equipment. Those are really the main criteria for going with a battery. And then, the second question is: do I want to leverage the production of my solar system in the morning to be discharged in the evening, minimizing what I put back on the PG&E grid? One of the main things is: who are you buying from? Are they a broker or are they a contractor? The individual that you're working with—do they work for the company that you're buying from, or are they just brokering out the deal to the cheapest contractor around? You can figure that out with the state license number and do a little bit of research. A few of the other things that you want to look into are: what are you buying? How many? What is the wattage? What is the warranty? What type of inverter, or what type of manufacturer, is supporting the product? What type of warranty do they have? How long have they been in business? And how much are you paying, and how are you paying? These are a few big things that you want to look for in a quote. The term "electrification" really means electrifying the home or going from fossil fuels to all-electric. With electric vehicle chargers becoming more common, considering all-electric heating and cooling for the home, you can also heat your water with all electricity. Induction cooking and other electric appliances allow you to put solar on your property and power your home with all electricity, no longer burning non-renewable fossil fuels.