Sustainable Energy Systems Review 2024 - SolarEmpower Residential View

Overview

Sustainable Energy Systems LLC is a family-owned solar sales and installation company based in Frederick, Maryland. Founded in 2008, the company aims its services at residential and commercial customers basing its business model on continued referrals and maintaining ongoing relationships with its commercial project customer base.

Sustainable Energy Systems LLC has experienced strong growth generating in the region of $10 million in revenue. Their success has seen the company expand its service provision across four branches consisting of 28 full-time staff.

Solar Panels and services offered by Sustainable Energy Systems LLC

Specific Solar Panels Offered

Sustainable Energy Systems LLC offers sales, design, engineering, procurement, installation, and commissioning services of solar systems; however, they do not provide any information on the solar panel specifications they use in their installations.

As a solar sales company, Sustainable Energy Systems LLC lists a wide variety of solar panel brands that customers can choose among to purchase or have installed by the company. Here’s the list of solar panels available:

Specific Types of Solar offered

Sustainable Energy Systems LLC offers the following categories of solar systems:

Grid Tied

Grid-tied systems make up over 90% of today’s photovoltaic systems. Utility companies across the country pay consumers for any excess power generated. When the consumer’s system produces more power than they are using, the excess power is pushed out into the power grid, and they are credited for each kWh.

Off-Grid

The DC power produced by PV panels can be stored in batteries, then converted into alternating current (AC) power by the inverter and consumed when needed. The advantage of off-grid systems is that the user gets the satisfaction of supplying all their own electricity, independent of the grid.

Battery Backup

These systems consist of small battery banks to give the user enough stored electricity to power critical loads such as a refrigerator, well pump, and lights for 2-3 days when the grid goes down.

Commercial PV

Sustainable Energy Systems LLC designs and installs commercial PV systems ranging in size from 20kW to 1MW. Commercial buildings often use a tremendous amount of electricity and also have large roof spaces available for solar panels. Solar can be a great investment for a business, with the solar systems paying for themselves in less than five years due to the many business-friendly incentives.

Installation costs and process

Costs

The company requires conducting a free, no-obligation consultation to provide the exact pricing for their service.

However, the company is well-reviewed, amassing 52 customer reviews across three sites. While the overall rating provided by customers was admittedly average at 3.9*, the majority of customers did express satisfaction with the company’s cost of products. Notably, even customers that provided ratings of 2* and less mentioned that the company’s pricing was extremely competitive but noted issues elsewhere in the installation process, which resulted in their negative score review.

As is evident from the customer feedback, the variety of solar panel options made available by Sustainable Energy Systems LLC stands the customer in good stead as they are more likely to identify a quality solution according to their customer’s budget than other companies that are bound by offering only a select few brands of solar panels.

Legitimacy

Sustainable Energy Systems LLC is legit. Here are some of their accreditations: 

In addition to the accreditations above, Sustainable Energy Systems LLC boasts 15 other industry certifications and affiliations and a further 20+ Master Electrician licenses across its operating territory. 

However, despite the impressive array of accreditations accumulated by the company, they are not BBB accredited. 

Maintenance

Sustainable Energy Systems LLC claims that it uses its own in-house staff for maintenance and provides a 25-year comprehensive workmanship warranty on installation.

However, this point seems to be the main reason the company has received a less than desirable 3.9* customer rating. Based on the customer reviews, 15 of 52 (29%) reviews were negative, all due to poor workmanship and extremely poor communication after the initial purchase.

Interestingly, several customers that provided 4* ratings and above also mentioned that the company was difficult to contact after installation but eventually got around to sorting issues.

Customer service (review analysis)

The consistency in the comments regarding the company’s inability to provide proper and timeous maintenance is concerning.

Further to this, the company sometimes responds to certain negative responses, and it seems like the company has accepted that its maintenance service does face a few hurdles. This is illustrated in the following response by the company to a maintenance-related issue: “Hi Sander, we understand you are frustrated and we apologize for our delay in getting out there. We have been addressing leak requests in the order they were received and should have a date for you soon.”

Not only does this point to the company struggling to complete maintenance-related work, but it also suggests that the company is receiving a large number of these types of requests which one could argue is due to poor installation leading to breakdowns.

The SolarEmpower View

Sustainable Energy Systems LLC provides its customers with industry-leading solar solutions for their homes and businesses at a very reasonable price and has assembled a strong portfolio of successful project completions. However, the company does seem to have an issue with being able to manage ongoing maintenance issues, which is a major red flag. SolarEmpower suggests that customers that are considering using Sustainable Energy Systems LLC practice caution and pay specific attention to the terms related to maintenance.