Northeast Solar

Ask around the Pioneer Valley about Northeast Solar and the name that keeps coming back is not the company's. It is Max. Across a run of 2025 reviews one installer, Max Childs, is named over and over for mini-split and heat-pump work: designing a four-zone system around a homeowner's goals in April 2025, working within a condo association's requirements that March, and on a May 2025 service visit finding two safety problems left by an earlier condenser install and fixing them at no charge. That says a lot about where this Hatfield company has gone. It started and still trades as a solar installer at 136 Elm Street, with Gregory Garrison quoted as its president in Athol Daily News coverage of state solar policy in 2022 and again in July 2025, and a 2017 Daily Hampshire Gazette story described it building and installing donated solar systems for area nonprofits. What a lot of customers are now hiring it for is heat. The written history is deep for a company this size: 54 reviews since 2021 across six sources, and a 5-star Google average over 95 ratings. The solar accounts carry the specifics. A 2023 reviewer walked through an 8.1kW install after being talked honestly through the shading from the mountain behind the house. A 2024 reviewer had panels put on a barn roof other companies had called impossible, on metal, with no leaks since and no electric bill. Several 2025 customers said the company filed their rebate and interconnection paperwork for them. The one dissent worth reading is a one-star from December 2025: two reschedules, one of them without notice, two months into a $22,000 job on a house getting a new roof, and a customer who concluded that because a contractor was paying the bill, nobody was in a hurry. It is a single complaint against a long run of steady work, but it is the thing to pin down if your job comes routed through a builder instead of booked direct. On credentials, the Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration is active and held by Northeast Solar Design Associates, LLC. Two more state licences sit behind the work: an electrician's licence held by David J Baird and a construction supervisor licence held by Phillip Baunsgard, which is the normal split between a company and its licensed people rather than a mismatch. The Better Business Bureau has it accredited since October 2015 with an A+ grade. Right call if you want rooftop solar, battery storage and mini-splits from one crew in western Massachusetts and you like knowing who will be on your roof. Get the schedule in writing, especially on a job a builder is coordinating, and ask up front who files your rebate paperwork.