Affordable Solar

Yes, get a quote, and read the second paragraph before you decide which company you are actually quoting. The residential record is the strongest in our New Mexico research. Affordable Solar opened in Albuquerque in 1998 (its own FAQ says 1997, a discrepancy two government documents, PitchBook, BBB, and its homepage all resolve in favor of 1998). BBB rates it A+, has accredited it since November 5, 2008, and shows 0 complaints in the last 3 years. The warranty is published with numbers, which is rarer than it should be: a 10 year workmanship warranty, a 5 year performance guarantee, and 25 year equipment warranties from the manufacturers, with the company filing the claim and installing the replacement, per its own blog and a This Old House writeup. The FAQ says all installations are done by in house crews and that a service team is in house too; a City of Albuquerque document adds the honest qualifier that the company self performs with specialty subcontractors where needed. Scale is real: 140 full time Albuquerque workers at the end of 2020 per the city, 141 per the state, and the company claims 4,500 plus New Mexico residential systems at a pace of 500 plus a year.

Now the structure, because the name on the truck is not the name on the paperwork. The legal entity is Affordable Solar Installation, Inc., a subsidiary of Zia Energy Group, Inc. The utility scale division the company built in 2014 has operated independently as Gridworks since March 2022, and BBB still lists Gridworks, Inc. as an alternate name. PitchBook records the company as acquired or merged on January 1, 2021 with no buyer named on the page we read, and no press release naming that acquirer was found. Three unrelated companies share the name and were excluded from this research: an Oklahoma outfit at affordablesolar.io, a Florida acquisition target called Affordable Solar Solutions, and a Cayman Islands firm. What you would be hiring is the Albuquerque residential arm of a mostly commercial and utility scale EPC. Make sure the contract names Affordable Solar Installation, Inc.

The license is what holds the grade at C. New Mexico licenses through the Construction Industries Division. An official City of Albuquerque LEDA document states the company holds a New Mexico commercial contractor license with EE98, EL01, and GB98 classifications, names Blake Richards, Director of Construction, as the GB98 holder, and lists contractor licenses in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, California, and Nevada. BBB says the company does possess required CID licensing, then flags that the dba Affordable Solar is not included in the licensing for Affordable Solar Installation, Inc. That is a registration formality flag from BBB, not a state action, and we are not treating it as one. The problem for our rubric is simpler: no license number is printed in any source we read, and the CID lookup is CAPTCHA gated and was not read. Two institutions vouching for a license is good evidence. It is not a registry read, and the cap applies. The only litigation found is a December 2016 patent suit by an Arizona competitor over a canopy design, dismissed on settlement October 13, 2017. Despite its size, the company is on neither 2026 Solar Power World list. Ask for the CID number, check it, and this grade has room to move.