Price and financing transparency is the weak spot.
That category has 7,548 complaints across 20,017 mentions, with 37.7% of its category evidence negative.
Best solar companiesCalifornia Solar Report
California Solar Report 2026
What 185,000+ published reviews reveal about California's solar industry
We read the full text of published customer reviews, owner responses, and California public install records to see where solar companies deliver for customers and where the industry still breaks down.
185,000+
published reviews analyzed
589
installers with a Solar.com Score
46
counties ranked
7.9
median Solar.com Score
The short version
Eight numbers that explain the market
Most published reviews are positive. The complaints cluster around money, timelines, long-term support, and a handful of national brands.
Permitting and activation delays show up often.
Timeline topics appear in 18.8% of reviews. One in five timeline mentions is negative.
High-response companies look cleaner in the text.
Companies in the top response quartile replied to 95.0% of reviews and drew fewer complaints than the bottom quartile.
Some five-star reviews still describe problems.
Five-star reviews are 87.9% of everything we read. A few thousand of them still mention missed timelines, price issues, or support gaps.
National brands carry a different complaint profile.
The five national brands average 3.38 stars, compared with 4.66 for every other installer.
Public-record prices vary sharply by county.
Among counties with at least 250 owned-system price records, the median spread runs from $3.06/W to $5.93/W.
Leases and prepaid TPO are a major California lane.
Statewide, 30.9% of systems are third-party owned. 20 counties sit at or above 30%.
Review volume doesn't predict rank.
Across more than 1,000 scored California installers, the number of reviews a company has tells you almost nothing about its Solar.com Score rank.
The rankings
California's top-scored solar installers
Every finding above feeds the Solar.com Score, 0-10, computed the same way for all 589 scored California installers. The median installer scores 7.9. These ten lead the state.
- 1Northern Pacific Power Systems275 reviews analyzed · 2,191 verified installsSonomaMarinNapaLake+29.2
- 2Option One Solar324 reviews analyzed · 2,137 verified installsSan BernardinoRiversideLos AngelesOrange+19.1
- 3First Response Solar163 reviews analyzed · 310 verified installsSonoma9.1
- 4B Henry's Quality Electric613 reviews analyzed · 18 verified installsSonoma9.0
- 5Cosmic Solar261 reviews analyzed · 1,879 verified installsSan DiegoOrangeRiverside9.0
- 6Kingdom Solar147 reviews analyzed · 525 verified installsAlamedaContra CostaSanta ClaraSan Joaquin9.0
- 7Got Watts Electric, Solar & Hvac230 reviews analyzed · 866 verified installsContra CostaAlamedaSolanoNapa8.9
- 8Nabu Energy219 reviews analyzed · 759 verified installsSanta ClaraAlamedaSan MateoContra Costa8.9
- 9Cinnamon Energy Systems205 reviews analyzed · 1,616 verified installsSanta ClaraSan MateoSanta CruzAlameda8.9
- 10Save A Lot Solar174 reviews analyzed · 955 verified installsAlamedaContra CostaSan MateoSan Francisco+28.9
Review text
Customer praise is broad. Customer complaints are concentrated.
Workmanship mentions are overwhelmingly positive. Price and financing transparency has the lowest praise-to-complaint ratio by far, which is why star averages alone miss the most actionable risk.
- Sales integrity16.5% complaints
- Price and financing transparency37.7% complaints
- Communication18.4% complaints
- Timeline, permitting, activation20.8% complaints
- Installation workmanship7.1% complaints
- Long-term support21.2% complaints
Owner responses
Replies are not a cure, but silence shows up.
Companies with high owner-response rates have lower complaint shares in the review evidence. This does not prove replies cause better projects, but it does show that companies that stay present in public tend to carry a cleaner complaint profile.
- Companies in split
- 604
- High-response review set
- 62,821
- Low-response review set
- 23,460
National brands
How the national names score.
Big brands are easy to recognize, and their published reviews are some of the most complaint-heavy in the state. Each brand below links to its full Solar.com profile. The best-scoring national brand sits at 7.3; the state's top installer scores 9.2.
4,995
national-brand reviews read
54.9%
national-brand complaint share
15.7%
everyone else's complaint share
| Brand | Solar.com Score | Reviews | Avg stars | 1-star share | Complaint share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freedom ForeverAlso: Southern California (3.9) | 4.3 | 536 | 2.72 | 54.1% | 73.0% |
| SunPower | 5.0 | 2,581 | 3.43 | 34.0% | 55.9% |
| Sunrun | 7.3 | 532 | 4.03 | 21.4% | 36.3% |
| Tesla Energy | 5.5 | 1,345 | 3.28 | 33.5% | 51.8% |
Public records
County economics change the story.
Review quality is only one part of choosing a solar company. Public records show price and ownership patterns that shift a lot from county to county, which changes what a fair bid looks like for a specific home.
Lowest county median price$3.06/WSan Benito County
Highest county median price$5.93/WTuolumne County
Lowest county third-party-owned share4.7%Humboldt County
Highest county third-party-owned share47.8%Tulare County
Top-scored installer in every county
Largest markets first. Price, third-party-owned share, and system counts are county-wide figures from public interconnection records (median price covers customer-owned systems, all installers). Each county page has the full ranked list.
| County | Top-scored installer | County median price | County third-party owned | County systems |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1San Diego County | 9.0Cosmic Solar | $4.82/W | 23.4% | 285,020 |
| 2Riverside County | 8.7Burke Electric | $4.13/W | 44.6% | 198,935 |
| 3Los Angeles County | 8.7Burke Electric | $3.99/W | 35.1% | 190,760 |
| 4San Bernardino County | 9.1Option One Solar | $4.25/W | 45.5% | 142,132 |
| 5Orange County | 8.8Infinity Solar | $4.13/W | 28.3% | 129,570 |
| 6Fresno County | 8.7Nova West Solar | $3.85/W | 34.5% | 96,749 |
| 7Kern County | 8.4Citadel Roofing And Solar | $3.73/W | 39.0% | 90,384 |
| 8Contra Costa County | 8.9Got Watts Electric, Solar & Hvac | $4.54/W | 23.2% | 89,151 |
| 9Santa Clara County | 8.9Nabu Energy | $4.58/W | 18.7% | 86,450 |
| 10Alameda County | 9.0Kingdom Solar | $4.58/W | 18.6% | 75,871 |
Show all 46 counties
How we built this
Public records plus published reviews, not paid placement.
Review corpus
We collected 268,287 review records from Google and Yelp and removed duplicates, leaving 186,427 unique published reviews.
Installer evidence
Each review is classified across six categories, from sales integrity to long-term support, alongside star ratings and owner responses. Read how the Solar.com Score works or browse the full California rankings.
Public records
County price and ownership stats come from California public interconnection records through May 2026. Municipal utility territory can be incomplete where those utilities do not file the same public records.
Marketplace disclosure
Solar.com is a solar marketplace. We connect homeowners with installers and may earn a fee when projects move forward. This report is computed from public records and published reviews. No installer can pay to change the data, score, or placement.
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