MARVIN WILCHER, President of NationWize. Courtesy photo to the "Benicia Herald":
The financial stability of a local business in line to help Benicia launch its solar rebate program for residents in single-family homes has been questioned by a former employee who said she is owed back pay. A customer with similar concerns said she is seeking her deposit back.
But Marvin Wilcher, president of NationWize Solar, 242 First St., said his company was caught by surprise when a Louisiana investor changed its funding arrangements. Wilcher said it will take about three and a half more weeks for a new funding cycle to begin.
At that time, he said, he expects to rehire his sales staff and proceed with helping residents get solar panels on their homes. And he said he hopes to obtain a memorandum of understanding with the city of Benicia to participate in the rebate program.
The former employee, Tina Thorn, who said she began working for the company in 2011, said NationWize wasn’t paying its employees, and that their checks were arriving late. “We left the company because of it,” she said.
One employee, she said, committed suicide because he couldn’t afford to live.
She said she was an office manager and project manager who was being paid $20 an hour, but when she left July 24, she was owed $1,440 for three weeks of work.
She said she has contacted the Department of Industrial Relations in hopes of getting paid.
The customer, Alicia Gallagher, said she had heard from Thorn and worried about her $4,037 down payment. She said she was expected to pay another $10,000 for materials due this week, but they haven’t arrived.
Two more installments also would be due, Gallagher said.
“We have nothing to show for it,” she said.
When she asked for a return of her deposit, she said Wilcher told her he would ask his installation contractor to deal directly with her, if she didn’t want to deal with NationWize.
“I’ll wait and see,” she said. “I plan to pursue this if I don’t get anything back.”
But another Benicia resident said she has dealt with Wilcher and NationWize, and is a satisfied customer.
“I’m ecstatic,” Susan Campbell said. “I can’t say enough about solar, or the job they did. Every month I get a bill, I give him (Wilcher) a copy.”
Her photovoltaic array was installed on her home in a job completed in February. Instead of paying PG&E for electricity, the utility gives her a credit.
In about a year, she said, the power company will determine whether she owes it any money, or if it owes her.
So far, Campbell continues to accumulate energy credit, something that started shortly after work on her project was done.
“It’s funny. PG&E does not put in the reverse meter until (the solar array) is in (for) a month. So the first month, you don’t get a credit,” she said. Neither did she owe money for power.
As for Nationwize and Wilcher, she said, “I have heard nothing negative.”
“It was a good procedure from start to finish. It was a good thing to work with them. I can’t say enough good.”
Wilcher said most of his employees are gone, but that the situation will change in the next business cycle.
“We’re not like a regular company,” he said. “We finance. We acquire customers. We have a pool of money from investors. We draw down funds and put in more from our own money.”
After pooling the investment money and getting customers, the company contracts with installers. It is an authorized dealer of SunPower Corp. high-efficiency solar cells, panels and systems.
Once a project is completed, Wilcher said, paperwork is sent to government agencies and the company gets new financing. “We have to wait for the state to replenish our funds,” he said.
He said the company did system installations last month, about a dozen projects worth $400,000. Those were for single-family homes, some of which had photovoltaic arrays, some of which had solar water heaters installed, and some of which had both.
Most of NationWize’s business — 95 percent — is in Louisiana, not California, Wilcher said. In Benicia, he said, the company has had about five sales employees, most of which are laid off until its new funding cycle starts in less than a month.
“We’re trying to expand our operation in California,” he said, but it’s challenging when this state doesn’t have rebates that are as generous as those elsewhere.
“In California, the incentives are almost none,” he said. By comparison, Louisiana offers a 50-percent rebate, and the federal government, through tax credits, offers an additional 30 percent. In California, he said, “we get almost nothing back.
In Louisiana, utility customers pay a flat rate of 10 cents per kilowatt hour, and the average bill is $150 to $175 per month for 1,500 kilowatt hours.
In California, utility customers don’t pay a flat rate. The lower users are on a first tier, at 12 cents per kilowatt hour. But those consuming more energy may pay 35 cents per kilowatt hour. Prices also change during peak hours, he said. Californians may pay up to $550 for the same amount of energy that costs just $150 in Louisiana.
That’s why Wilcher, a Vallejo resident, said he doesn’t move to Louisiana. If PG&E rates continue to rise at the current rate each year, he said, in 20 years California residents will be paying thousands of dollars for the same power they pay hundreds of dollars for now.
In addition, he said, Solano County is anticipating $180 million from a new PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) program that will let property owners pay for renewable energy projects through tax assessments. Those loans stay with the property if it’s sold.
“Ygrene is the company sponsoring the new program,” he said, referring to a Santa Rosa company that manages PACE programs throughout the country. Renewable Funding, of Oakland, also provides financing tools for renewable energy projects.
Both Ygrene and Renewable Funding were recommended by Benicia’s Climate Action Plan coordinator Alex Porteshawver in a July 5 report to the Community Sustainability Commission.
Wilcher said he hoped his company, working with that program, would assist in getting out-of-work construction and electrical workers trained at SunPower’s Richmond plant to install solar systems. Those jobs would pay from $25 to $100 an hour, he said.
As for those who have criticized his company, Wilcher called Thorn a “disgruntled employee.”
He said Gallagher went to his office without notice and asked for a refund, and said most companies don’t return refunds once design and other work has started and a contract has been signed. He suggested her request was approaching a breach of contract.
As for the suicide, Wilcher said the man, Jeffrey Ames, did not hang himself because he had not been paid.
Ames had been working for the company for several months as a commission-only salesperson when Wilcher learned that his wife was planning to leave him and take his daughter and stepdaughter, and that he needed money because sales had declined.
He told Wilcher he was being evicted from his apartment, because the place was in his wife’s name. Wilcher said he wrote several checks to Ames and counseled him on how to approach his upcoming court appearances. He said Ames did not file all the paperwork he needed for the appearance, and that a judge would not allow him to submit the documents he needed.
When the wife sent her daughters to another state, Ames despaired of seeing them again. “He was devastated,” Wilcher said.
When Ames did not show up for work for several days, Wilcher said he and his girlfriend eventually went to check up on the man, and were the first to see his body.
“That’s the real story,” he said.
Wilcher said his company has always completed its installations. In fact, his company has a waiting list of customers that he said will produce $1.5 million in projects in NationWize’s future.
Representatives of the Oakland office of the Better Business Bureau, which covers Solano County, said NationWize has no record of complaints. SunPower confirmed NationWize is among its authorized dealers.
As for NationWize’s dealings with Benicia, Anne Cardwell, director of Administrative Services, said the rebates for the program under consideration by Benicia “come from the manufacturer, Sun Power, and are not dependent on who does the installation.”
However, she said, “We would like to work with an installer with an office as local as possible.”
Cardwell said, “As with anytime the City does business with an outside entity, we have a process for thoroughly checking bids and references before we move forward.”
She said the Community Sustainability Commission is prepared to recommend that the City Council allocate $100,000 in Valero-Good Neighbor Steering Committee settlement funds to match SunPower’s $3,000 rebate for each single-family residential home that decides to install solar panels.
“This is planned to be on the agenda for the September CSC meeting,” Cardwell said.
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