Your solar installer went out of business — the complete owner's guide

Residential solar has gone through a bruising shakeout in the last several years. Large national installers have filed Chapter 11, regional installers have shut down without notice, and even some long-established brands have been absorbed into successor companies. If you're one of the estimated hundreds of thousands of U.S. homeowners whose original installer is no longer reachable, this guide will walk you through a framework that works regardless of which installer you had or how they exited the business.

The short version: the single most important mental model is that your solar system has multiple warranties from multiple companies, and the health of each is independent of the others. Your installer's status is just one of those contracts — and usually not the most financially important one.

The warranty stack: five contracts, four companies

On a typical modern residential solar system you have, at minimum, these warranties in play:

1. Panel product warranty — issued by the panel manufacturer (Qcells, REC, Silfab, Jinko, Maxeon, etc.). Typically 12-25 years depending on brand.
2. Panel performance warranty — also issued by the panel manufacturer. Typically 25-30 years, guarantees the panels won't degrade faster than a specified rate.
3. Inverter warranty — issued by the inverter manufacturer (Enphase, SolarEdge, SMA, Tesla, Generac, etc.). Typically 10-25 years.
4. Battery warranty (if equipped) — issued by the battery manufacturer (Tesla, Enphase, FranklinWH, LG, Generac, etc.). Typically 10-15 years.
5. Workmanship warranty — issued by your installer. Covers installation labor, racking, wiring, roof penetrations. Typically 10-25 years. This is the only one directly tied to your installer's corporate status.

When people hear "my installer went bankrupt, what do I do?" they often imagine all five warranties are gone. In reality, only #5 is directly threatened. Warranties #1-4 are intact and represent the majority of the economic value of your system's warranty protection.

Assess your installer's actual status

Before assuming your installer is gone, check. Situations vary significantly:

• Complete shutdown (e.g., Titan Solar Power 2024): No successor, no ongoing support. Workmanship warranty is effectively unenforceable.
• Chapter 11 reorganization (e.g., Freedom Forever 2026): Company still operating during restructuring. Workmanship warranty may be honored, may be partially honored, or may be rejected — outcome determined by bankruptcy court over 12-24 months.
• Business exit with solvent parent (e.g., ADT Solar 2024): Parent company still solvent and may continue honoring warranties through designated service partners. Quality and response times vary.
• Chapter 11 with asset sale (e.g., SunPower 2024 → Complete Solaria): Successor company acquired warranty obligations along with assets. Most claims handled through the successor.
• Acquired by another installer: Most common outcome. Your warranty is typically honored by the acquiring company.
• "Silent" inactivity: Company technically still exists but isn't responding to inquiries or doing new work. Treat as effectively shut down for planning purposes; in some cases a consumer complaint to your state's attorney general or contractors' licensing board gets attention.

Five minutes on Google, your state's contractor licensing board, and the bankruptcy court PACER system will usually clarify which bucket your installer falls into.

Identify every piece of equipment

You can't file manufacturer warranty claims without knowing what you have. Four reliable sources:

1. Interconnection agreement / utility paperwork: Your utility has a copy of the interconnection application filed by your installer. It lists every panel and inverter model. Request a copy through your utility's customer portal or solar interconnection office.
2. County or city permit records: Solar requires a permit. The permit application typically lists equipment. Most jurisdictions let you look up permits online by address.
3. Physical labels on the equipment: Every inverter has a label with manufacturer, model, and serial. Every panel has a label on the back (and usually a serial stamped into the frame). Every battery has a label.
4. Monitoring platform: Enphase Enlighten, SolarEdge Monitoring, and the Tesla app all list device serials for every connected component.

Put everything you find into a single folder with your install year, interconnection date, and contract copy. This becomes your "system ownership binder" — something every solar homeowner should have and almost none do.

Equipment warranties 101: panels, inverters, batteries

What you can generally expect:

Coverage ends when the earliest term expires — so a mainstream panel with a 12-year product warranty is at risk of uncovered defects in years 13-25, even though the 25-year performance warranty still technically applies. Know which panels you have and when their product coverage actually ends.

Reclaim your monitoring

Monitoring is not optional maintenance — it's how you know if a warranty claim is warranted. If your system has an installer-branded monitoring portal and that installer is gone, switch to the underlying manufacturer platform.

For Enphase microinverter systems, this means creating an Enphase Enlighten homeowner account. For SolarEdge string inverters, it means a monitoring.solaredge.com account. For Tesla systems, the Tesla app. Each of these companies has a process for transferring site ownership to a homeowner when the original installer is gone.

A system without working monitoring might be underproducing by 20% for a year before anyone notices. That's thousands of dollars of lost electricity and a potentially lost warranty window.

Performance claims and the annual audit discipline

A healthy residential solar system loses about 0.4-0.5% of its output per year. So after 10 years, a system should still be producing roughly 95% of its first-year output. If you're down to 80% of expected, something is probably wrong — a failed microinverter, degraded panels, a shading problem, or a cumulative issue worth investigating.

The discipline is to benchmark once a year. Compare your actual 12-month kWh against expected production for your system size and climate. If you're below 90%, investigate. If you're below 85%, it's likely a claim-worthy issue.

This is what SolarAftercare's $79/year Annual Production Audit subscription automates. You can also do it yourself with a spreadsheet and publicly available solar insolation data — takes about an hour if you know what you're doing.

Workmanship: the hardest warranty to replace

There's no good substitute for a functional installer workmanship warranty. The realistic strategies are:

• Local licensed solar contractors. Most markets have at least a few contractors who will service "orphan" systems for time and materials. Expect $150-250/hour labor rates for solar electricians; roofing work is separate.
• Homeowner's insurance for roof-related issues. Some policies cover damage caused by improperly sealed solar penetrations, though you typically need to prove proximate cause.
• Small claims court. For unresolved issues against a still-existing installer, small claims court works for amounts under your state's limit (usually $10,000-15,000). Low cost, no lawyer required.
• State contractor licensing board complaints. If your installer still has an active license and is ignoring warranty obligations, filing a complaint can produce movement.
• Bankruptcy proof of claim. If your installer filed Chapter 7 or Chapter 11, you can file a claim against the estate. Recovery is usually modest but not always zero.

Net-metering: why resale risk is usually bigger than warranty risk

Here's the counterintuitive part of owning solar when your installer is gone: for many homeowners, the biggest financial exposure isn't a future warranty claim. It's the quiet erosion of net-metering value when they go to sell the house.

In California alone, the difference between a grandfathered NEM 2.0 system and a Net Billing Tariff system can be worth $500-2,000 per year in electricity bill savings. Over 15 remaining years, that's $7,500-30,000 in net present value. If your grandfathered tariff doesn't transfer cleanly to a new homeowner — which is the case in many jurisdictions — you can lose a substantial chunk of your system's contribution to home resale value.

The rules vary by state and utility. California's investor-owned utilities (PG&E, SCE, SDG&E) each have their own NEM transfer policies, and those have changed multiple times. Arizona's APS and TEP have separate rules. Nevada's NV Energy has still different rules. It is worth spending 30 minutes with your utility's documentation before you list a solar-equipped home for sale.

When a battery retrofit actually makes sense

Batteries get oversold. Here are the situations where a retrofit genuinely pencils for orphan-system owners:

• You're NEM-grandfathered in a state where it doesn't transfer cleanly, and you plan to sell in 3-10 years. The battery shifts your economics from "export and collect a shrinking tariff" to "self-consume a large share of production," which holds up under any future rate structure or new-owner transition.
• You live in a region with frequent outages (parts of California, Texas, Florida hurricane zones, etc.) and resilience is worth something to you.
• Your utility has time-of-use rates with a big evening peak where exporting during the day and buying back in the evening loses you significant money. A battery closes that gap.

Where a battery usually doesn't pencil: full-retail net metering states with stable grandfather status that transfers, or regions with low outage frequency and flat rate structures. Run the numbers honestly before signing up.

If you financed your system

Good news: most solar financing is not with the installer. It's with a third-party lender — GoodLeap, Mosaic, Sunlight Financial, Sunrun's SunLease (for leases), Dividend Finance, and others. Your monthly payment goes to that lender, not your installer. The installer's financial status doesn't affect your loan.

If your installer's issues have made your system non-functional or have caused it to underperform, some loan agreements include provisions related to system performance. Review your loan paperwork carefully before assuming. In the worst cases, consumer protection attorneys have negotiated loan modifications for homeowners stuck with a loan on a non-performing system — but this is niche, not universal.

Leases are the tricky category. If you had a leased system (TPO — third-party ownership), the lease obligation is to the lease company, not the installer. If the lease company is a separate solvent entity, your lease continues normally. If the lease company was the same entity as the installer and they've filed bankruptcy, things get complicated — you may want an attorney.

Roof and penetration maintenance

Easy to forget, expensive if neglected: solar systems are attached to your roof, and those attachment points need to stay sealed. After 10-15 years, roof sealants can degrade. If your installer is gone and you're not going to get a warranty service call, it's worth scheduling a roofer-and-solar-aware inspection every 3-5 years. Costs a few hundred dollars. Catches small problems before they become water-in-the-attic problems.

Your 30-day action checklist

1. Day 1: Confirm your installer's status (operating / bankrupt / shut down / acquired). Pull your install contract, interconnection paperwork, and any existing monitoring login.
2. Days 2-3: Identify every piece of equipment. Request utility interconnection records and county permit records if needed. Label everything.
3. Days 4-7: Establish homeowner accounts with the underlying manufacturer monitoring platforms (Enphase Enlighten, SolarEdge, Tesla).
4. Days 8-14: Run your first annual production audit. Compare 12-month production against expected output. Note any anomalies.
5. Days 15-21: Research your state's NEM rules and how they handle home sales. Document what applies to your system.
6. Days 22-30: Build your "system ownership binder" — digital or physical. Include contract, interconnection, permits, serial numbers, manufacturer warranty links, audit results, and contacts for a local licensed solar contractor.
7. Going forward: Run the audit yearly. Inspect roof penetrations every few years. Revisit NEM and battery economics when you're within 5 years of a potential sale.

Frequently asked questions