RALCO Electric

RALCO Electric & Generator has been wiring homes and businesses out of 101 State Rd in Westport since 1986, and it is not a small shop: the Better Business Bureau lists a corporation with about 30 employees and Rene A. Lachapelle Jr. as president, working across Massachusetts and Rhode Island from the Westport base and a Rhode Island hub in North Kingstown. Standby generators are what most homeowners hire them for. Permit records on BuildZoom show 59 permitted projects, overwhelmingly residential generator installs with a typical value around $11,800, and the reviews match: a February 2025 customer described a Kohler install where every phase was explained before work began and the handover came with written and digital instructions, another in February 2025 described a 20kW Kohler going in at their mother's house with the technicians walking her through it afterwards, and an October 2025 reviewer called the whole crew professional from install through testing. The service side draws its own praise: a July 2025 reviewer said service manager Jonathan Owen diagnosed an RV power fault in fifteen minutes with a multimeter after multiple dealerships had failed, and a 2022 reviewer described twice-yearly generator maintenance visits and remote monitoring over several years. A September 2024 reviewer got an emergency rewire around a new window finished by one o'clock the same morning. On the commercial side the company was recognised in October 2024 by Starkweather & Shepley in the Electrical – Commercial category for projects under $2 million, and won an ABC Massachusetts Excellence in Construction award in 2013 for work at a plant in Ayer. The complaints cluster on billing rather than the wiring. A February 2024 reviewer from Warwick, RI said they were charged the electricians' hourly rate for drive time each way and paid roughly $750 in commuting over two six-hour days; a separate February 2024 review made the same travel-time complaint and described invoices confusing enough that it took six months and a call from the company's new finance staffer to settle. A December 2023 reviewer who was otherwise glowing said RALCO went quiet when he raised problems with the Kohler monitoring app. Two other one-star reviews are about aggressive driving in company vehicles rather than any job. They are a strong call for a standby generator, from spec through the maintenance contract, and for commercial electrical work. Before signing, ask explicitly how travel time is billed and get the estimate itemised, and ask for current Massachusetts and Rhode Island licence numbers — BuildZoom's profile still flags 'no active license on file' against Rhode Island records it last checked in 2016.