Your solar company went out of business.
Start here: your panels still work, and your net metering is safe. Neither of those depends on the company that installed them. But some of what you were promised did die with them — and nobody is going to call and tell you which parts.
Three things a bankruptcy does not touch.
Your system keeps producing. Panels make electricity through a physical process that has no idea who sold them. There is no remote switch, no subscription, no license to lapse. The morning after the filing, your array does exactly what it did the morning before.
Your net metering is intact. That agreement is between you and your utility — PG&E, SMUD, Roseville Electric — and the installer was never a party to it. PG&E's NEM2 tariff ties eligibility to the system staying at its original location, not to the company that built it.
Your manufacturer warranties survive. The 25-year panel warranty is an obligation of the panel manufacturer, not the installer. If that manufacturer is still trading, the coverage is still real. What's changed is that you now have to file the claim yourself.
What you actually lost.
People use the word "warranty" as if it were one document. On a solar installation it's usually four or five separate promises from two or three different parties — and a liquidation cuts cleanly between them. This is the single most useful thing to understand about your situation.
| What you were promised | Who actually owes it | Survives the bankruptcy? |
|---|---|---|
| Panel performance & product warranty (typically 25 yrs) | Panel manufacturer | Yes — if the manufacturer is still trading |
| Inverter or microinverter warranty (10–25 yrs) | Inverter manufacturer | Yes — same condition |
| Battery warranty, if you have storage | Battery manufacturer | Yes — same condition |
| Workmanship / labor warranty (often 10–25 yrs) | The installer | Generally no |
| Roof penetration & leak warranty | The installer | Generally no |
| Production guarantee / savings guarantee | The installer | Generally no |
| Free monitoring & annual service visits | The installer | Generally no |
Simplified, and your contract governs. In a Chapter 11 reorganization some obligations are assumed by the reorganized company or a buyer; in a Chapter 7 liquidation they generally are not. If a lease or PPA was sold to a new servicer, that servicer typically inherits the maintenance obligations — read the assignment notice you were sent.
Your first week, in order.
None of this is urgent in the fire-alarm sense. All of it gets harder the longer you leave it, because records disappear when a company winds down.
- Find your paperwork and scan it. The installation contract, the equipment list with model numbers, the warranty certificates, the permit and final inspection sign-off, the interconnection agreement, and your PTO letter from the utility. If it's a lease or PPA, that contract too. Put it all in one folder in the cloud. This packet is what every later step depends on, and it's also what a buyer's agent will ask for.
- Identify your actual hardware. Not the brand on the truck — the brand on the equipment. Panel make and model, inverter make and model, and whether you have string inverters, optimizers, or microinverters. It's usually on the inverter label by the main panel and in the contract. This determines everything about who you can call.
- Take back your monitoring account. This is the step most people skip and the one that matters most. Your data almost certainly still exists — it's just registered to a company that no longer reads it. Create your own account directly with the equipment manufacturer (Enphase Enlighten, the SolarEdge monitoring portal, or whichever platform your inverter uses) and have the system transferred into your name.
- Pull twelve months of production and compare it to what you were sold. Your original proposal contains a modelled annual kWh figure. Compare it to reality. A shortfall of a few percent is normal weather variance. Fifteen percent is a dead string, a failed optimizer, or shading nobody accounted for — and it's been costing you money quietly for however long it's been happening.
- Keep paying the loan or lease. Your financing was almost certainly written by a separate lender, and that obligation survives regardless. If a lease or PPA was assigned to a new servicer, you'll have received notice — the new owner steps into the old one's shoes. Stopping payment damages your credit without fixing anything.
- Check whether you're owed anything in the bankruptcy. If you paid a deposit for work never completed, you may be an unsecured creditor with a claim deadline. Recovery is usually pennies on the dollar, but the filing costs you little. Look up the case docket, or ask us and we'll point you to it.
- Get the system inspected by someone independent. Ideally by someone with no crew to keep busy and nothing to sell you. You want to know what you own, whether it's performing, whether any manufacturer claims are still open to you, and whether those roof penetrations are sound — before the next winter, and well before you list the house.
You are not an unlucky exception.
Residential solar has been through an extraordinary consolidation. Rising interest rates, the shift to NEM 3.0 in California, and business models built on aggressive customer acquisition combined to take out a remarkable number of large installers in a short window. If your company is on this list, you have a great deal of company.
| Company | What happened | When |
|---|---|---|
| Pink Energy (formerly Power Home Solar) | Chapter 7 liquidation | October 2022 |
| ADT Solar | Exited the solar business | January 2024 |
| Titan Solar Power | Ceased operations | June 2024 |
| SunPower | Chapter 11 bankruptcy | August 2024 |
| Lumio | Chapter 11 bankruptcy | September 2024 |
| Sunnova | Chapter 11 bankruptcy | June 2025 |
| Freedom Forever | Chapter 11 bankruptcy | April 2026 |
Not an exhaustive list, and it doesn't include the many regional installers that simply closed their doors without a filing. If your company isn't here, that doesn't mean anything is wrong with your system — call us and we'll help you work out who, if anyone, still stands behind it.
An orphaned system is a transaction problem too.
This catches people out. When you list a home with solar, the buyer's agent asks who services the system, and "the company went bankrupt" is a genuinely bad answer to give with no documentation behind it. It invites a price reduction, or a request for repairs nobody can price.
Two specifics worth knowing for a California sale:
- Disclosure is required. California law requires sellers to disclose whether a solar system is owned, financed, or leased, and to hand over the relevant contract. A financed system may also carry a UCC-1 fixture filing recorded against the property — a lien that has to be dealt with in escrow, and one that surprises people at the worst possible moment.
- Your net metering tariff is an asset — but which one matters enormously. Under PG&E's NEM2 schedule, a legacy NEM 2.0 system's eligibility transfers with the property, and the buyer inherits the remainder of the original 20 years measured from the first Permission To Operate date. That is a genuinely valuable thing to be able to prove. Systems on the newer Net Billing Tariff work differently — that legacy period is tied to the original customer rather than the equipment, and generally does not pass to a buyer. Know which one you have before you market the house.
A documented inspection turns all of that from a liability in the negotiation into a folder you hand over. It's the cheapest thing you can do to protect the number.
The quiet failure problem
A failed optimizer or a dead string doesn't trip a breaker or make a noise. It just produces less. On an orphaned system with no monitoring, the usual way people discover it is a true-up bill twelve to eighteen months later — by which point the money is gone and unrecoverable.
We adopt other people's systems.
We're brokers, not installers — we didn't sell you this system and we're not trying to sell you a replacement. That's exactly why we're a reasonable party to look at it. Two services, and they're the two things an orphaned system is missing.
Independent solar inspection
- Full physical inspection of array, racking, penetrations and electrical
- Production analysis against your original modelled output
- Equipment identified and documented — make, model, serial
- Which manufacturer warranties are still live and claimable
- Written report you can hand to a buyer or an agent
An extensive inspection is $699 and adds deeper electrical testing and thermal imaging. See exactly what's covered →
YES Monitor
- Your system on our dashboard, whatever brand it is
- A person reviews production daily — not just an app you'll stop opening
- You get a call when output drops, not a notification you'll miss
- We pursue manufacturer warranty claims on your behalf
- Works on systems nobody else will touch
Built originally for commercial fleets, and it's the same watching applied to one roof. How the monitoring works →
Orphaned solar, frequently asked.
My solar company went out of business. Do my panels still work?
Yes. Solar panels generate power through a physical process that has nothing to do with the company that installed them. A bankruptcy doesn't switch anything off. Your system keeps producing and your utility keeps crediting you exactly as before. What changes is who you call when something breaks — and whether anyone is watching for that in the first place.
Do I lose my net metering if my installer goes bankrupt?
No. Your net metering agreement is with your utility, not your installer — the installer was never a party to it. Under PG&E's NEM2 schedule, eligibility for the 20-year transition period is tied to the generating facility remaining at its original location, not to the company that built it. SMUD customers are on a separate tariff structure entirely, and the same principle applies.
What happens to my warranty?
It splits. Manufacturer warranties on panels, inverters, and batteries are obligations of those manufacturers, so they survive as long as those manufacturers are still trading — but you now have to file the claims yourself. The workmanship warranty, the roof penetration warranty, and any production guarantee were promises from the installer, and those generally don't survive a liquidation. See the full split above.
Do I still have to pay my solar loan?
Almost always yes. The loan was typically written by a separate finance company, so your obligation runs to the lender and continues unchanged. With a lease or PPA, the contract is an asset that usually gets sold to another servicer during the bankruptcy, and the new owner takes over both the payments and the maintenance obligations. Keep paying, keep records, and read any assignment notice carefully — stopping payment damages your credit without resolving anything.
How do I get my monitoring working again?
Usually one of two problems. Either the installer's own branded app has been switched off, or your account with the equipment manufacturer is still registered to the defunct company. The hardware is nearly always fine and the data is nearly always still being recorded. The fix is to open your own account directly with the manufacturer — Enphase Enlighten, the SolarEdge portal, or whichever platform your inverter reports to — and have the system transferred into your name. Call us and we'll talk you through it for your equipment.
Can anyone still service my system?
Yes — any appropriately licensed solar contractor can work on it. The practical difficulty is that repairs are now billable rather than covered, and some companies are reluctant to take on another firm's installation without knowing its condition. That's precisely why a documented inspection is worth doing first: it turns "someone else's mystery system" into a known quantity that a contractor can quote against.
Is the inspection worth $399 if the system seems fine?
"Seems fine" is the problem. Solar failures are almost entirely silent — nothing trips, nothing beeps, output just drops. If the system is genuinely healthy you get documentation that protects you in a future sale and confirmation that your manufacturer warranties are intact, which is worth having. If it isn't healthy, you've found it while the warranty claim is still open rather than after it expired.
Do you only cover Sacramento?
Sacramento and the surrounding counties are home ground — Placer, El Dorado, Yolo, Sutter. We work more widely across Northern California, and our commercial work goes further still. Call and ask; the answer is usually yes.