Baker Home Energy

In 1938, Leroy Baker graduated from the University of Nebraska, worked for GE in New York, and spent years as an electrician in Montana before the Great Depression drove him west. He settled in Escondido, California, where his wife’s family lived, and started a small electrical contracting business serving local households. That modest operation became Baker Electric, and nearly 90 years later, it remains headquartered in the same North San Diego County city where it all began. The business stayed in the family. Ted Baker, Leroy’s great-grandson and the fourth generation to lead the company, joined as an estimator in the 1990s and became President in 2000. By 2006, Baker Electric had grown enough to build a 30,000-square-foot headquarters in Escondido. Around that time, residential solar demand surged in Southern California, and Baker saw an opportunity to bring its electrical expertise to homeowners looking for clean energy solutions. In 2007, the company launched Baker Electric Home Energy as a dedicated division focused on residential solar installation in California. The timing proved fortuitous. Even as the 2008 recession battered the housing market, Baker Home Energy grew rapidly. The company installed an 85-kilowatt solar array on its own headquarters in 2009, earned recognition as SunPower’s number one volume dealer in 2010, and ranked on the Inc. 5000 list with 111 percent growth between 2008 and 2011. By 2014, the residential solar team had outgrown the main Baker Electric building and moved into its own 26,000-square-foot facility down the street. Today, Baker Home Energy has installed solar panels on tens of thousands of Southern California homes, with projects spanning San Diego County, Western Riverside County, and Southern Orange County. The company handles every aspect of solar energy projects in-house—design, engineering, permitting, installation, and long-term service—using its own employees rather than subcontractors. Beyond solar panels, Baker offers complete home energy solutions, including battery storage systems for backup power and cost management, HVAC installation and repair, roofing services, EV charger installation, and electrical panel upgrades. As a GAF Master Elite Roofing Contractor and certified Tesla Solar Roof installer, the company can coordinate roofing work with solar installation for Escondido homeowners planning both projects. Baker Home Energy’s reputation for ethical business practices has been recognized repeatedly. The company holds a BBB A+ rating and won the Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Ethics in 2016, 2019, and 2021—the Pacific Southwest region’s highest honor for integrity and trust. In 2017, Baker received the BBB International Torch Award, placing it among a small group of North American companies recognized for ethical excellence. The company also earned spots on the San Diego Business Journal’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies list in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and was named one of the Best Places to Work in San Diego in 2016. For homeowners in Escondido and surrounding California communities, Baker represents a local solar installer with deep roots and staying power. The electrical contracting expertise that Leroy Baker built in 1938 continues to inform how the company approaches solar energy today, and the family ownership structure suggests the business will be around to honor warranties and service systems for decades to come.