Your Solar Company Went Out of Business. Here's What to Do.

If your solar company went out of business, take a breath: the panels on your roof still work, most of your equipment warranties survive, and your lease or PPA doesn't disappear. What you actually lost is your service contact — and that part is fixable. Here is what still stands, what's gone, and what to do this week.

You are not alone in this. Several large solar installers have gone bankrupt in recent years, leaving thousands of "orphaned" systems in Los Angeles with no one to call. Servicing those systems is a core part of what we do, so the steps below come from the work, not from theory.

First, confirm the company is actually gone

Unreturned calls don't always mean bankruptcy — sometimes a company was acquired and your service contract moved with it. Before assuming the worst, check three things:

• The paper trail: do calls and emails bounce, and is the website down or frozen in time?
• The contractor's license. California's Contractors State License Board (CSLB) lets you look up any contractor's license for free. A license showing expired, suspended, or inactive is a strong signal the business has stopped operating.
• Acquisition or bankruptcy notices. Search the company name for news of a sale or a bankruptcy filing. An acquisition means a new company may owe you service; a Chapter 7 liquidation means the company is gone for good.

If the company was acquired, contact the acquirer and ask, in writing, whether they honor existing workmanship warranties. If it liquidated, the rest of this guide is your playbook.

What survives — and what you actually lost

Manufacturer warranties survive

The warranties that matter most were never your installer's to begin with. Solar panels typically carry manufacturer warranties of around 25 years on the product and its power output; inverters commonly carry 10 to 25 years depending on the brand and model. Those warranties are between you and the equipment manufacturer, and they stand regardless of who installed the system or whether that company still exists.

One catch: manufacturer warranties cover the equipment itself, but often not the labor to diagnose the failure and swap the part. That labor is what your installer would have handled — and it is the service gap you now need to fill.

The workmanship warranty usually dies with the company

The installer's own promise — covering their labor, the roof penetrations, the flashing, the wiring runs — is generally unenforceable once the company is dissolved, unless a third party backed it. This is the real loss. It is also why an independent inspection of the roof attachments and connections is cheap insurance after an installer disappears: you want to find a slow leak now, not during the first big storm.

What happens to your monitoring

Many homeowners first learn their installer folded when the monitoring app goes dark. That usually happens because monitoring ran through the installer's fleet account, which stopped being paid or maintained.

Two things to know. First, monitoring is visibility, not production — panels keep generating power even when the app shows nothing. Second, it is recoverable: most inverter manufacturers let a homeowner claim a direct account for their own system, or a service company can re-home the system under its account and watch it for you.

What happens to your lease or PPA

If you lease your system or have a power purchase agreement, the company you signed with usually sold that contract to a financing partner long ago. The installer going under does not cancel the agreement — in a bankruptcy, your contract is an asset that transfers to a new owner or servicer.

Practically, that means:

• Keep paying. Stopping payments can put you in default even while the companies sort themselves out.
• Watch your mail and email for a servicer-transfer notice telling you who now holds the contract.
• Ask the new servicer, in writing, who is now responsible for the maintenance and repair obligations your contract promises. Under most leases and PPAs, the owner must keep the system running — hold them to it.

What to do, step by step

1. Gather your paperwork. Find your contract, the permit set or system plans, and the equipment list — panel and inverter models and serial numbers. Serials are in your monitoring app, on your spec sheet, or on the equipment labels.
2. Register warranties directly with the manufacturers. Panel and inverter makers honor their warranties for the system owner; registering (even late) puts the relationship in your name instead of your defunct installer's.
3. Get monitoring back under your control — a direct homeowner account with the inverter manufacturer, or monitoring through your new service company.
4. If you lease or have a PPA, identify the current owner/servicer and keep records of every payment and message.
5. Book an independent system health check. A production test plus an inspection of roof penetrations and connections tells you whether the orphaned system is healthy or quietly failing.
6. Line up ongoing service with a company that offers solar panel repair for orphaned systems — see below, because many companies won't touch them.

How to get an orphaned system serviced

Here is the frustrating part most homeowners hit: many installers refuse to touch another company's work. They don't want liability for someone else's wiring, and they would rather sell a new system than repair an old one.

We take the opposite view. Collective Solar provides solar repair for any system, no matter who installed it — including systems whose original installer went bankrupt. A diagnostic visit tells you exactly what state the system is in, and you get a straight quote before any work happens.

The most common failure on an orphaned system is the inverter, which wears out years before the panels do — that's a routine inverter replacement, not a reason to abandon the array. And once the system is healthy, an occasional solar maintenance visit keeps it that way; typical prices are in our guide to solar panel maintenance costs.

A dead system quietly costs you the $100–$200 a month in savings it was supposed to deliver. Getting it running again is almost always cheaper than the electricity you are losing while it sits idle.

Choosing who services your system next

You just watched one solar company vanish, so it is fair to be picky about the next one. Whoever takes over your system's care should check every one of these boxes:

• They service systems they didn't install — stated plainly, not reluctantly. If repair is a sideline they use to pitch you a brand-new system, keep looking.
• They work on your equipment brands. Give them your panel and inverter models up front and ask directly.
• They diagnose before they quote. A company that prices a fix without seeing the system is guessing with your money.
• They warranty their own work — you are rebuilding the workmanship coverage you lost.
• They have a local office and a track record. A business that has been around your area for years is the best available predictor that it will still answer the phone in five more.

That list is also a fair way to vet us. We're based in Northridge, we've served the Valley since 2010, and orphaned-system repair is a core service, not a favor. If your installer is gone, request a free assessment and we'll take it from there.