Meet Uprise Solar customer Rene Hayden in this latest installment in our Humans of Uprise series! Rene and his neighbor went solar around the same time, so Rene, a teacher who worked in construction in the past, compared the two processes, and was very impressed with the Uprise team’s passion and professionalism.
DC By Way Of Canada And California
Rene’s DC origin story starts in Canada. Like many in the District, he’s a transplant. “I didn’t think I would be here for a super long time,” Rene says. “But then I started sinking down roots and establishing careers.”
Originally from Vancouver, he attended grad school in San Diego before his then-wife got a postdoctoral position at the National Institutes of Health. Rene’s graduate studies were in history, and he worked at the University of Maryland for around three years before they lost funding and he was laid off. He then worked a variety of jobs, including construction work, before his son’s preschool teacher noted he was good with kids and should explore teaching. She was in a certification program through the Center for Inspired Teaching. Rene applied to the program and was accepted.
“That was definitely the toughest year of my life,” Rene says. “And I’ve had really hard jobs, like foreman throwing their hard hats at you and swearing at you every day while you’re in a hole up to your knees in mud. But I do really value them and their organization. I really wanted to find out how to actually teach. They gave me the tools to go in the classroom and think about: how should I do this correctly?”
Now, Rene has been either a teacher or working in a school for 15 years. He started out teaching high school English. Then, since he speaks French, he had the opportunity to teach at Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School, a French and Spanish immersion school in Brookland. He taught third grade for several years, and recently became a teacher who teaches teachers, or an instructional collaborator. He says, “I’m in all of the classrooms and none of the classrooms.”
Rene also met his wife, Richelle, through teaching. She also went through the Center for Inspired Teaching program and is also an instructional collaborator after teaching for five years. They have one child, who’s five, in a full house which also includes Rene’s two children and Richelle’s son from their previous marriages.
The Experience Of A Solar Customer In DC
Rene has lived in his Sixteenth Street Heights home for 20 years. He approached solar with a very practical mindset, saying, “I’m a very conservative person actually when it comes to home remodeling, because as a school teacher, I do not have a lot of money. So I have to marshal it into things that are absolute necessities or are low-risk benefits to the house.”
He appreciated his initial conversation with his Uprise sales consultant, Patrick, who Rene says “didn’t push at all” and provided a wealth of information with his best interests in mind. Rene says, “I could have taken the information and gone with another solar company.”
He had 19 solar panels installed on his flat roof in October 2024 through Uprise’s no-cost option. The system started operating in December 2024.
Solar Best Practices
Rene had a unique opportunity as a solar customer to test how Uprise Solar does things, since his neighbors, good friends of his, went solar around the same time with another company, who offered a package with free roofing.
“But the roofing was not good quality,” Rene says. “And in terms of the actual installation, it seemed like that company or the installers they hired didn’t really know what they were doing or didn’t really care. It was like, let’s bang it out, we don’t have the right thing, okay, let’s just use spray foam, and stuff like that. I don’t want to dwell on the negatives of other companies, but I’m just saying it really set me at ease with what Uprise proposed and how they went about doing it. They were really interested in best practice.”
Rene also needed roof work done, and he was very impressed with Uprise roofer TJ’s passion for roofing and the discussions they had about the best materials to use and best practices. “I had to pay for the roof,” he says, “but they worked with me to make it more economically feasible and I really appreciated that.”
He was pleased with his experience as a solar customer with Uprise, and says he’d recommend Uprise to anyone.
“Especially in comparison to what I saw going down with the company that installed next door, Uprise was very upfront, very professional, very committed to the larger project, and really interested in doing it right the first time,” Rene says. “My impression of Uprise is that the business is proceeding from a really strong ethical standpoint and I can really feel that. After I told [the Uprise crew] about the roof next door, nobody bad-mouthed the other company or anything like that. They pointed out things that weren’t right, but it was a clinical sort of thing. Uprise is really interested in the broader project of solar and what that can do to benefit the grid and the environment.”
Pepco Hassles Straightened Out
When he went solar, Rene had some unfinished business with Pepco that Uprise’s project manager Leandro helped sort out. During the pandemic, Pepco had come into Rene’s neighborhood and wanted to put all the homes on heavy ups. But since he was quarantining with his kids, Rene asked them to finish the work later. They installed a huge cable, but never reached out to complete the job. When he wanted to go solar, Rene contacted Pepco, but they said he’d need to pay $10,000 for a new panel with larger capacity.
“Leandro was like, ‘No, absolutely not. I’m going to get on this,’” Rene says. “Leandro was very, very helpful in dealing with Pepco and also just so informative. He was checking in all the time and letting me know what was going on.”
Leandro worked with Pepco to solve the issue, and Rene didn’t have to pay $10,000.
Pride In Construction
“Uprise really is, for me, a model company of what customer relationships should be like,” Rene says. “I didn’t tell [the Uprise crew] I’ve done house construction and utility construction before, but just having that background, I sat back and was seeing what they’re doing. And everything checked the boxes. These people are craftsmen, and they know their stuff, inside out, backwards, forwards.”
While talking with the crew, he noted they spoke with satisfaction about other solar projects they’d done. “I could really feel that people are proud of the work,” Rene says. “It’s rare to have that amount of pride and professionalism across the entire range of the company, from the installers to the electricians to the sales people. I got the sense that people are really invested in their craft.”
He particularly enjoyed conversations with crew lead Rigobert, who worked as an electrician in Cameroon before moving to the US and starting to work for Uprise in 2023. They had fun speaking in French.
“They’re good dudes. They knew what was up,” Rene says. “Everybody I dealt with at Uprise was knowledgeable, passionate about the work, and very down to earth.”
DC Highlights: Green Trees, Good People
This past summer, Rene embarked on an epic road trip with Richelle and their five-year-old. They drove across the south to San Diego in California, up to Vancouver, and then to Cranbrook in British Columbia, Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan, Fargo in North Dakota, and Milwaukee in Wisconsin before driving all the way back to DC.
“Those cities are nice, but they’re not as lush as DC,” Rene says. “Like there’s so many trees in DC. When I was driving home I was like, woah! You know, you’re not home for a while, you see all the things you take for granted.”
After seeing so much of the United States, he was also able to appreciate DC’s solar landscape. “I think people don’t realize how sweet we have it in DC when it comes to solar,” Rene says. “The government initiatives are really helpful. I think a lot of people now are starting to become aware of those things.”
He enjoys cycling in DC, and for those who may be nervous about it (like me!), he recommends the book The Art of Urban Cycling by Robert Hurst. He compares the rise of solar to biking.
“Once you reach the critical mass, as the cyclists like to say, once you reach a certain presence of cyclists on the street, it changes the collective behavior,” Rene says. “Even if there’s no bike lanes, no infrastructure, nothing, the most important thing is to have bikers on the street and then it changes car drivers’ behavior. And I think that’s the case here too. Once you start seeing your neighbors getting solar, you’re like, ‘Oh, they got solar, why did they do that?’”
Also, Rene has met wonderful people here, especially in education. He says, “DC is a big city, but it’s also a bit of a small town sometimes. You see people randomly, and you’re like, hey!”
Uprise Can Help You Go Solar In DC Too
“I think [Uprise] is doing the best job they can with the best materials available,” Rene says, “and they really are offering something of tangible benefit to people that is going to make at least the world of power generation and consumption slightly better.”
If you’d like to reap the benefits of solar as well, get in touch! We want your experience as a solar customer to be equally as positive as Rene’s. You can schedule a conversation here or call Uprise at (202) 750-5718.
And be sure to check out more Humans of Uprise stories here.