Update 8/22/2024: Renova Energy told its local news station KESQ it is resuming operations and has brought back around 60 of the 300 furloughed employees. The company has formed a new lease partnership with Qcells and will be transitioning its customers from Sunpower leases to Qcells leases. CEO Vincent Battaglia told KESQ the focus for the rest of the year is installing the backlog of about 350 cash and signed leases.
Palm Desert-based solar installer Renova Energy sent a letter to all customers last week saying it will temporarily halt all operations in California and Arizona after SunPower, one of its partial investors, limited its own operations.
Renova CEO Vincent Battaglia emphasized in the letter that the halt is temporary and would be remedied in the coming weeks, “once our partners/debtors take proper steps.” But SunPower stock has fallen 73% in a week, with analysts predicting this is the beginning of a “winddown process” for SunPower, according to Yahoo Finance.
SunPower is also a partial investor in residential solar companies Freedom Solar Power, Sea Bright Solar and EmPower Solar.
Renova’s operational pause letter via Reddit.
I’ve been hoping to follow up and place the order for a system including battery backup once Renova starts taking orders again. Live in The Springs and Renova has a great reputation here.
I don’t personally know Vincent Battaglia, but as a client since 2019 I can attest to his operating a First Class company from initial solar installation to quality follow-up service and maintenance. Renova Energy will successfully prevail in this unfortunate transition due to SunPower’s failure.
Vincent is a class act gentleman and I have no doubts he will take care of his customers and employees.
Unfortunately, my experience with Renova has been horrific! From the initial meeting with the sales rep to the installation, including scheduling and customer service most interactions have been sub-par. The only redeeming value was the local crew who demonstrated awesome customer service. The icing on the cake, is my current huge electric bill because they did not install enough panels. And now, there’s no one to address this issue. Let’s see how Renova’s CEO’s integrity and words in his recent email pan out.
Sure. Instead of broadcasting negativity you could have just call me direct and it’s handled ☀️ I’m not going anywhere and you knew that.
Thinking of Vince and the whole Renova Team. I’m positive that they will turn things around for Renova. Best of luck to you all.
“The comeback is always stronger than the setback!”
Eric, you’re right as always ☀️
All of us that have sunpower for monitoring should have changed monitor companies or said no outright to any kind of contract.
You turn in an issue to sunpower about the system and get told “you are just too stupid to understand how this works”.
I would not recommend them to anyone. They overextended themselves forcing Titan Solar to overextend and hire for on the job training with no time to really train anyone.
The salespeople for Sunpower lie about the size system you need and what you can expect.
There is a new predator out here called Rival, at least that is what it sounded like
He wanted to sell us more panels, increase our cost, pay even higher for monitoring while getting less from the power company.
I talked to a friend at the power company. When the kph went up, our exchange rate was supposed to match it. It was an interesting conversation.
Sunpower needs to reslease is customers ftom the overpriced systems they sold. $30,000.00 for a system that covers 1/2 of my roof and the monitoring should be about $8,000.00 to $10,000.00 less for a single story doublewide with no shade interference. Their pricing alone makes no sense unless they are trying to cover their losses. Its ridiculous what they charge for a total.
This is a sad day for Solar.
Renova is a top solar company with a marvelous CEO who is compassionate about his employees and customers.
Hopefully this is only a temporary shutdown and not a portend of things to come for the solar industry.
There are so many factors here, and part of the issue is the problems rippling through the solar industry because of California’s NEM 3.0.
Thank you. Ed ☀️ Renovians are standing strong together ✊☀️