My solar installer went out of business. What now?
A practical sequence for California homeowners, in the order that actually protects you. Do these in order — step two saves people the most money.
First, keep paying.
It feels wrong. The company that sold you the system has vanished, the system may not even be running, and the instinct to stop the payment is completely understandable. Do not act on it.
Your financing agreement is almost always with a separate lender, not the installer, and that contract survives the installer's bankruptcy untouched. Missing payments damages your credit and, in many solar loans, can trigger enforcement against a lien recorded on your property. If you believe you have a claim against the seller, there are legal routes to raise it — and a consumer protection rule called the FTC Holder Rule sometimes lets a borrower assert claims against the party now holding the loan. That is a conversation for a consumer attorney, not a reason to default in the meantime.
Second, find out whether your system is actually broken.
A surprising number of homeowners who call us have a working array and a broken reporting connection. When an installer shuts down, the monitoring portal it operated often goes with it, so the app stops updating even though the panels keep producing normally.
Check your utility bill before you check anything else. If your billed usage is still low, or your net metering credits are still accruing, the array is producing and you have a monitoring problem rather than an equipment problem. That is a far smaller and cheaper fix.
The five-minute version. Pull the last three utility statements. Compare billed kilowatt hours to the same months a year ago. Flat or slightly higher is normal. A jump back to what you paid before the panels went up means the system stopped producing, and you now know roughly when.
Third, work out what you own.
This determines everything that follows, and a lot of people genuinely are not sure. Dig out the original contract and identify which of these you signed:
- A cash purchase. You own the equipment outright. Every decision is yours and repair spending is straightforward.
- A loan. You own the equipment; a lender holds a security interest. Roughly six in ten residential solar projects in recent years were financed this way. You can authorize repairs freely, but check whether a lien was recorded against the property.
- A lease or power purchase agreement. You do not own the panels. A third party does, and that party — not you — is responsible for maintenance. Paying for your own repair here can be a serious and avoidable mistake. Find out who now holds the agreement first.
Fourth, contact the equipment manufacturers directly.
Your panel and inverter warranties come from the companies that built the hardware, and they are unaffected by the installer's collapse. Locate the manufacturer name and model from the inverter label or your system documentation, then register or verify the warranty in your own name.
Be clear-eyed about what this gets you: a replacement part, shipped. It does not get you a technician. Manufacturer warranties almost never cover labor, so you will still need a licensed contractor to diagnose the fault, submit the claim, and perform the swap. Knowing the part is covered still changes the economics of the repair enormously.
Fifth, hire a contractor who services other companies' systems.
Not every solar company will touch an array it did not install. The ones that will are the ones you want — they have made service a deliberate part of their business rather than an afterthought to selling new systems.
Ask directly: do you take over orphaned systems? Will you file the manufacturer warranty claim on my behalf? What does the diagnostic cost and is it credited toward the repair? And always verify the license at cslb.ca.gov before any money changes hands.
If your system was never switched on
This is the worst version of the problem and it is not rare. Some companies collapsed mid-project, leaving systems installed but never inspected, never granted permission to operate by the utility, and never commissioned. The homeowner makes loan payments on equipment that has legally never produced a kilowatt hour.
Untangling this means finding out where the permit and interconnection application stalled, correcting whatever the original installer left undone, and getting the system through inspection and PTO. It is more paperwork than most repairs, but it is a well-trodden path and a contractor who does this regularly will know exactly which office to call.
Be careful who you let inspect it. A dead system and a distressed owner is an attractive sales opportunity. Free inspections that conclude your entire array needs replacing, financed conveniently through the inspecting company, deserve real skepticism. Get a second written opinion before you sign anything that looks like a new system contract.