There are a lot of solar companies in New York right now. They all promise big savings, and they all sound pretty similar until you start asking the right questions.
After a decade of helping New York homeowners go solar, we’ve seen how this plays out. Most homeowners figure that out after the fact. You don’t always know what to look for until something goes sideways. It can be a quote that suddenly changed, a project that stalled, a warranty that didn’t hold up the way you expected. Before you sit down with any solar company, we share five things that should give you pause.
1. They Quote You Without Ever Looking at Your Electric Bill
A solar system is sized based on how much electricity your home actually uses. Not a rough guess, but your home, specifically – your usage history, your seasonal patterns, your appliances, your square footage. That information lives in your electric bills.
If a company is throwing numbers at you before they’ve asked to see your usage history, those numbers aren’t real. And when you base a 25-year decision on numbers that were pulled out of thin air, you’re taking on a lot of risk that you don’t even know you’re taking on.
Think about what that actually means in practice. A system that’s undersized for your usage means you’re still paying a significant electric bill every month, even after you’ve paid for solar. A system that’s oversized means you spent more than you needed to and you’re producing electricity you’ll never use. Neither of those outcomes is good, and both of them can be avoided by one simple step that any legitimate installer should take before putting together a proposal.
Ask your installer to walk you through how they sized the system and what usage data they based it on. If they can’t answer that specifically, or if they never asked for your bills in the first place, that proposal isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
2. Someone Showed Up at Your Door and Wants You to Sign Today
Door-to-door solar isn’t automatically a red flag. Some great companies use field sales teams, and for plenty of homeowners, that conversation at the door is the first time solar has ever been explained to them in a way that actually made sense. A good salesperson, in person, can answer questions in real time and help you understand how the numbers apply to your specific home.
But there shouldn’t be any pressure to sign the same day you hear about it. You should know that a lot of solar companies operate on what’s called a redline pricing model. The redline is the minimum price at which the company will sell a system. It covers their costs and builds in a baseline profit. Anything above that number is flexible. And in many cases, that flexibility goes directly into the salesperson’s pocket as commission.
What that means is that the person sitting across from you has a direct financial incentive to charge you as much as you’re willing to pay. The company makes the same either way. The rep makes more if the price is higher. So when a salesperson is creating urgency, pushing you to decide before you’ve compared quotes or talked to a neighbor who’s already been through the process, that’s not a coincidence. That’s the model working exactly as designed.
A solar company that’s priced fairly and structured correctly doesn’t need you to rush. They want you to compare and talk to other homeowners. They want you to take a few days and ask questions, because when pricing is standardized and the numbers are honest, time works in their favor, not against it.
If someone is pressuring you to sign before you’ve had a chance to think it over, that pressure is telling you something. Listen to it.
3. They’re Not Recognized by NYSERDA
If you’re a homeowner in New York, this is one of the simplest and most important filters you can apply when evaluating a solar company.
NYSERDA stands for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. They run the NY-Sun program, which is one of the main ways New York State supports residential solar adoption. More importantly for homeowners, they certify solar installers based on quality, safety, and accountability. Many of the incentives available to New York homeowners – rebates, credits, and programs that can meaningfully reduce what you pay – require you to use a NYSERDA-certified installer to qualify. So if your installer isn’t on their list, you may be leaving real money on the table.
Beyond incentives, NYSERDA recognition is a third-party signal that an installer is doing the work correctly on a consistent basis. It’s not self-reported. It’s based on actual performance metrics tracked over time.
There are two tiers of recognition worth knowing about. Gold Status means an installer has met NYSERDA’s quality benchmarks for three consecutive years. Platinum Status means six consecutive years. That’s not a small distinction. One good year could be attributed to a strong crew or a lucky run of projects. Six consecutive years of passing audits and maintaining quality standards across hundreds of installations is a pattern. It means the quality is built into how this company operates.
When you’re evaluating a solar company, ask them directly whether they’re NYSERDA-certified, and then verify it yourself on NYSERDA’s published list of recognized installers. If a company claims a designation but it doesn’t show up when you check, that’s a red flag.
4. Warranties Are Vague or You Can’t Get a Straight Answer
Solar panels are built to last. Most quality panels carry a 25 to 30-year production warranty, and inverters typically come with 10 to 25 years of coverage depending on the brand and model. Those numbers sound reassuring, and in terms of the equipment itself, they usually are.
But a lot of homeowners don’t ask about workmanship at all.
The panels and inverters are only part of what makes up a solar installation. There’s also the mounting system, the roof penetrations, the wiring, the conduit runs, the electrical connections. All of that is labor, and it’s covered by a workmanship warranty, which is separate from the equipment warranties and varies significantly from one company to the next.
Workmanship warranties matter because that’s where most real-world installation problems actually originate. A roof leak that develops a few years after installation. A wiring issue that causes the system to underperform. A conduit run that wasn’t sealed correctly. Panel manufacturer warranties don’t cover any of that. Only the installer’s workmanship warranty does.
Ask every company you talk to: what’s your workmanship warranty, how long does it last, and who do I call if I have an issue two or three years after the install? A company that stands behind its work will answer those questions clearly and without hesitation. If the answers are vague, inconsistent, or you have to ask multiple times to get a straight response – pay attention to that. The companies that are difficult to pin down on warranty details before you sign are often the same ones that are hard to reach after the system is installed.
Also worth asking: do the warranties transfer if you sell your home? For a lot of homeowners, solar is also a home value decision. If you sell in ten years, knowing the warranty transfers to the new owner is a meaningful part of that value proposition.
5. It’s Not Clear Who Is Actually Doing the Installation
This is one of the most important things to understand before you commit to anything.
The company that sells you solar and the company that installs it are not always the same. In fact, in a significant portion of the industry, they’re not. There are solar companies whose primary function is sales. They generate leads, close deals, and then hand the project off to a separate installation crew, often whoever they’ve subcontracted in your area. The salesperson who sat at your kitchen table may have no real connection to the team that shows up on your roof.
That structure creates real problems. When sales and installation are split between two separate organizations, accountability splits with them. If something goes wrong (a permit that gets delayed, a roof that gets damaged during the install, a system that doesn’t produce what was promised) you can end up getting passed back and forth between a sales team that says it’s an installation issue and an installer that says it’s a sales issue. Meanwhile, you’re the one sitting in the middle.
What to ask: are the people who will physically install my system your employees, or are they subcontractors? Do the sales and installation sides of this operate under the same roof, or is there a handoff involved? If there’s a handoff, what does that look like and who do I call if there’s a problem after the project is done?
A company that handles everything in-house, where the same organization is responsible for the sale, the design, the installation, and the service after the fact, has nowhere to hide when something goes wrong. That accountability is built into the structure. And for a purchase this significant, that structure is worth prioritizing.
The Bottom Line
Solar can be a genuinely smart financial decision for your home. In New York especially, between the federal tax credit, state incentives, and NYSERDA rebates, the numbers often work out very well for homeowners who go in prepared.
But the outcome depends heavily on the company you choose. The same system installed by two different companies, under two different pricing structures, with two different levels of accountability can lead to dramatically different results, and not just in cost, but in the quality of the installation, the reliability of the system, and the experience you have if anything ever needs attention down the road.
These five questions are meant to make the process clearer for you. A company that’s set up to do right by you will have no problem answering all of them directly. Take your time. Compare quotes. Ask questions. And don’t let anyone turn a 25-year decision into a same-day signature.
