Why I Left
My own array. I bought it before I ever worked in this industry, and I'd buy it again.
When my family bought our first home in North Texas, the first thing I wanted was solar on the roof. I'd wanted it for years. So I called five local installers.
Four of them arrived with a contract already printed. They didn't ask about my roof, my usage, or what I was trying to accomplish. They wanted a signature that day.
The fifth was different. The owner sat on a cardboard box at a folding table, because my furniture had not even been moved in yet. They spent two hours teaching me the math. Production, financing, what the installation would actually involve. She's the one I hired, and that system is still on my roof.
I liked it enough to change careers over it.
I'd worked in technology since 2001 - data center operations at Iron Mountain, then several years as a Mac Genius at Apple, then IT at a school in Dallas when I moved here in 2013. In 2018 I moved out of the school IT department and into the classroom, teaching STEM to 1st through 4th graders: coding, robotics, 3D printing, design thinking, computer science. Four years of it. What I learned there matters more to this job than anything else on my résumé. I'm good at taking something complicated and making it make sense to someone who isn't an engineer.
In 2022 I joined that same solar company that did my install. Design and sales at first, then Technical Director, responsible for system design, financing, installation and commissioning. Eventually I was the one taking the calls nobody else wanted. Eventually I was the one taking the calls nobody else wanted.
Those calls are what changed things.
Homeowners started finding us after their original installer went out of business. Some needed repairs. Others just wanted somebody to explain why their electric bill hadn't moved. When I would ask for details about their system they would often send their original contract, and what I found was hard to believe: hidden lender fees of 30%-50% that nobody had said out loud, production estimates that were not physically possible for their roof, systems quietly reduced in size after signing with no reduction in price. Over the past year I've done dozens of these audits.
Two things became obvious. The first is that I'm built for this work; give me twenty-five pages of contract jargon and I'll keep digging until the truth falls out. The second is that I couldn't provide the focus and detail these reports require while still making service visits. (I also hated spending hours in the Texas sun fixing systems.)
So I left to focus on what I am good at and dedicate myself full time to helping homeowners (Plus being in AC all day is nice too ;-). I still think highly of the company and the people there. The care and ethics of the founder and everyone there is their foundation, and that is why they are still in business after more than 10 years, while dozens of other unethical companies are out of business. They truly care and want solar to have a good name.
Why I actually do this.
My family's money is in a solar system too. When I look at your contract, I'm reading it the way I read mine at that folding table; trying to work out whether the numbers were real, with my own savings on the line.
That's the whole job. I'm not protecting a commission or a relationship with an installer. I'm telling you what I'd want somebody to tell me.
