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I enjoyed working with Solar Wholesale, and they got me off to a good start. But there is a pretty significant markup even when considering they're giving you a "wholesale" DIY kit. I was quoted ~$35k pre-incentive for my project.

Also, be sure to do your own roof measurements when you look over their proposals. For my project, they used fairly inaccurate aerial/sat photos, which got the shape of my roof entirely wrong. Had I accepted their offer, I'd have ~33% too many panels / racking that wouldn't fit on the roof.

I ended up sourcing all the materials myself. I got much nicer inverters (1:1 Enphase IQ8+) and PV modules (455W LG bifacial) than what they were offering (2:1 APSystems inverters, 355W Bluesun panels).

The real kicker: I had enough budget left over to have a professional solar installer install all the panels for me, so I'm not the one that has to get on my steep roof, plus I have a warranty on the worksmanship of the installation. Pre-incentive, I'll have spent about $24k on my self-sourced version.

At some point I'll write up a blog post about the whole process - parts selection and sourcing, finding an installer, permitting, etc. It's really not that hard.




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