Major players in the residential market vs. local installers - which is better?

That also seems extremely likely to me. I don't know much about other national companies, but I know that SolarCity is laser focused on reducing cost in order to stay competitive post FTC. I believe that was the reason they purchased Silevo and are manufacturing panels in the US. The cost of doing business will increase significantly. And when it does, companies that can offer a short payback period or lower price than market kWh rates will fare well.

SolarCity doesn't compete on price. They win business based on marketing. Anyone doing any sort of competent research would strike them off the list without a second thought. Post-ITC, they should be fine, because their customers are the most ignorant of the ignorant, and those folks will always be out there, ready to buy a good story no matter how poor the numbers work out. (no offense intended to SolarCity customers who may be reading this).

Local established installer
Disclosure i work for one
Now my take on this
I was in this business when the Carter era credits expired.
All the big players were gone within months. ( reynolds aluminum, grumman, sears, revere etc)
Beware of the roofer electrician who runs this under a subsidiary business.
If the contract is under a name or license number other than the main bisiness than they can bow out without any liability.
A recent example of this is shuco who sold a lot of hot water systems.
They shut down the US subsidiary and skated on all warranty issues.
Those who fail to follow history are doomed to repeat it

I was around for that one too, but as a neophyte solar geek. It was a mess but woke up a lot of folks who had thought solar was the hands down future. Hope I'm wrong, but things sure look like they're shaping up for a repeat soon.

So you posted on a forum filled with local installers and few National installers. What kind of response did you expect to get?

Any installer can go out of business and then rename their company and get a new license. A national company or a 50 year old roofing company can do this. I believe your best bet is to make sure you get quality equipment installed. That way it has the best chance of lasting and being warranted by the manufacturer. Some national companies will not let you spec the equipment. You are rolling the dice and hoping for good equipment. At least with a local company you have the best possibility of benefiting your local tax base more than a National company.

Yeah sort a, I dont think it will to much of a slowdown in area's where kWh are expensive. I do see the SC's of the business rolling up and selling the ongoing revenue (people paying the leases) to what we call superannuation funds, they love that long term recurring revenue stuff, it might make elon enough to survive his other issues and actually start to make money

I've broken it down to 2 options. Going with Costco /sunrun or going with local installer LA Solar Group, which seems to get good reviews here. The local company is about 10 % cheaper. I would love to save a couple of thousand dollars, but isn't a 10% premium worth the backing of Costco? If sunrun goes belly up, Costco will still be in business

IMO - No, it isn't worth it.

But it's your money.

It is not only the company. In California I would recommend using a company that has a C-46 license, The C-46 is solar specific and can do all aspects of the job. Using a C-10 (electrical contractor) can be dicey. As a C-10 may know the electrical side, their journey men know squat about roof penetrations and proper flashing and actually a C-10 is not licensed for that part. Usually they will sub out a roofer for that, then you have to deal with two companies. Although a B contractor (general) can perform everything, they can be lacking in some of the finer aspects of design and proper installation. Check the license regardless of the company and see if they have had any complaints with the CSLB or whatever is the equivalent in your state. Most reviews are done within the first few days or weeks after the install is performed and are a little misleading. Often only displaying only the positive reviews and omitting the others. Look for long term results from the contractor that you choose. The company may have been in business for 5-7 years and may look solid. Until you find out in the 8th to 9th year they have gone out of business because they cannot afford to honor their warranties. In the end, do your homework and independently ask others who have first hand experience with the contractor of your choice.

I don't feel like I need a company to "service my system" in a few years. Anyone can service your system.

What is the big deal? If my inverter dies, call the company who made it and try to get a new one under warranty. Or buy a new one. Swap it.

The hard part of solar is the roof footings, the permits, lifting the modules, applying for net-metering and SRECs.

A warranty is nice, but I would not pay very much extra for it.

As for premium installs - conduit inside the attic and mounting inverters in the basement are part of that.

It did renew.

Lets substitute a major company building solar panels who walked away and left their customers high and dry when they decided not to play the solar game anymore, Arco, Shell, Siemens, Schuco, Evergreen. Same thing will happen with big names, they will figure out a way to sell the division to shed any liability.

My prediction is that the long term financial instruments may remain but the servicing companies will change. SolarCity just leases and installs the product and then resells the lease to their shell company Terraform Power. Solarcity will go bankrupt but Terraform will be holding the paper. After the inevitable bankruptcies, someone will end up with the leases at a steep discount. The new owner will then try to figure out a way to monetize them. One method is make it impossible for a person selling a home with a leased PV system to transfer it to a new owner. The original owner will be stuck having to pay an overinflated fee to buy out their lease, which the current leaseholder bought at pennies on a dollar. The new firm wont have a lot of interest in any long term service and I expect the fixed price for removing the system when the owner needs to reroof is long gone.

A consumers choice is to buy know brand equipment installed by a local installer with a long resume of installations. There are extended warranties available for inverters and at least one solar panel company, Canadian Solar, has their warranty coverage backed up by an independent insurance company, even if they go under, the insurance company has to cover the warranty. Even that has its issues as if a panel fails and there is no inventory, the insurance company is most likely going to cut a prorated check for the one failed panel and leave the owner with a partially functioning array. The other thing out of the owners control is a good local building inspector. If the inspector is thorough and doesn't accept shortcuts, the local contractors will know it and ramp up their game a national firm will most likely just take their chances and send someone back to correct what they were caught on. If on the other hand the inspector is overworked or just plain lazy, the locals will know what shortcuts they can get away with.

"I had a little trouble parsing that when I was on a phone call at the same time, so I ran your text in a reading difficulty calculator and it scored a 51 (30-50 is considered difficult to read). I then put in some text from a long Facebook post I recently made, and it was a 75 (fairly easy to read.). "

Wow I am thrilled by your insightful commentary and its applicability to this thread. My assumption is that most folks are here for the content and graduated from high school with reading skills but I guess I must be wrong, Holding Facebook posts up as an example of writing quality is not something I would be proud of . Probably a good example why some folks sign leases that they haven't read, don't understand and are clueless when they get taken for a ride. I guess the commenters expectation is the Theodor Geisel approach is required for all posts. The reality is that if folks aren't financially literate, they had better find someone they trust who is or plan on getting taken for a ride.

As the prior poster commented even if everything was done right, the little guy still can get burned.

Yea. +1. Welcome to a 3d world future full of knuckle dragging mouth breathers.