Dishonest/*****ulent solar company - WATCH OUT!!

Sorry for the essay below, this gives the whole long story:

So my experience with Juan was very positive up until the deposit was paid and the work started, answering my questions anytime even late at night and being very accomodating (ironically, he actually always warned me about rogue installers who run away with people's money and don't honour contracts, but swore up and down that wasn't how he does business).

After I paid the deposit, it wasn't terrible yet, but he changed from being ultra responsive and accomodating to always busy with other things and "fitting me in" where he could. Btw, he provided me references I could call to verify his work and they sang his praises, but I have a suspicion he simply does right by a small group of people he can call on for references and then walks away from everyone else.

After paying him in full though (before a CoC, SSEG registration completed and proper commissioning + having a few electrical wiring concerns), he totally ghosted me. Blocked me on Facebook, wouldn't answer the whatsapp phone line or normal cellphone, wouldn't reply to msgs or emails, nothing. I even went to his listed business address in John X Merryman street by MKem, but there was no Renegade Energy to be found there.

I can say that having paid R160k and someone now not responding, not willing to honour any of the warranties etc... has been a bit of a nightmare and upset my wife and I quite a bit.

I ended up finding another, reputable installer to add one battery and look at the system. After looking through the entire setup he informed me that:

I had 10x545w panels on one MPPT on my inverter, which besides voiding my inverter warranty, is very dangerous The entire installation wasn't earthed The CoC Juan ended up giving me (after chasing him and threatening to report him), wasn't valid as it was signed by the wrong type of electrician who couldn't sign off a DC + AC installation. This would have left me in the dust with my insurance if anything happened Wrong cabling was used across the board The setup/commissioning was done incorrectly, leaving my full solar system only powering my essential load items during the day, not my whole house and mostly functioning as a straight backup system I had to pay the other installer to fix the mess Juan and his team made + issue me a proper CoC + do my SSEG registration. It cost me an extra R25k for all that.

My warranties are now being honoured directly through the supplier who Juan bought from because he won't honour them, it's a disgrace to be honest.

Anyway, you can hear I'm still ****ed about it, but the guy really did me in and disrespected me then ran away.

In short, I would warn you off of doing business with him at all costs. Weirdly enough I end up talking to his dad (Juan let slip the company name he used to work for when I questioned how new his company was in the beginning, that company belonged to his dad) and he told me that Juan had ****** his clients and some of his money to get his own business started. Sounded like a real mess so I just wished him good luck and wrote the whole experience off.

The other installer I used was Dean Esau from Somewatt Solar. He's not cheap, but he is very good and honours his agreements properly.

In terms of advice, I would just try get references from FB or Whatsapp groups from your neighbourhood on legit installers, I found Somewatt solar that way.

Lastly, I tried to review Renegade on google, but I think Juan must have changed some setting to stop reviews on his company because it keeps not posting.

Good luck and just keep in mind, proper after sales is 100% worth paying a premium for, these systems are too complex to deal with yourself and your only real port of call 99% of the time is the installer at the end of the day, I got lucky with the supplier helping out, but it isn't the norm and took a lot of convincing that I shouldn't have needed to do.