My Solar Installer Went Out of Business — Now What?

You opened your monitoring app and something looked off. Or maybe you got a Duke Energy bill that seemed way too high for a home with solar panels on the roof. So you called your installer — and the number is disconnected. The website is gone. The company vanished.

This is not a rare story in Central Florida. Between the utility rate restructuring after 2022, shifting net metering rules, and the economic turbulence that followed COVID-era expansion, dozens of small and mid-size solar installers across Orange, Lake, Seminole, and Polk counties quietly closed their doors. Some gave notice. Many didn't. They left thousands of homeowners with systems on their roofs and no one to call.

If you're in that situation right now, take a breath. Your panels didn't disappear with your installer. Your system likely still works, and there is a clear path forward.

What Actually Happens to Your Warranty When an Installer Closes?

Here's the distinction that matters most: installer warranties and manufacturer warranties are two completely different things.

Your installer probably offered a workmanship warranty — usually 5 to 10 years — covering the quality of the installation itself: roof penetrations, wiring, racking, conduit runs. When the installer closes, that workmanship warranty is effectively gone. There's no one left to honor it. That's a real loss, and it's okay to be frustrated about it.

But the equipment warranties — the ones that actually protect the hardware on your roof — are held by the manufacturers, not your installer. And those companies are still very much in business.

• Enphase microinverters carry a 25-year manufacturer warranty, registered to your home address. Enphase handles warranty claims directly. Your installer closing does not affect this.
• SolarEdge inverters come with a standard 12-year warranty, extendable to 25 years. Like Enphase, SolarEdge processes warranty claims through their own support channels — not through your installer.
• SMA inverters carry a 5-year base warranty with upgrade options. Again, SMA is the warranty holder, not whoever put the system on your roof.
• Solar panels from major manufacturers — LG (legacy panels still out there), REC, Silfab, Qcells — carry 25-year performance warranties tied to the panel serial numbers, not to the installation company.

The bottom line: your equipment is probably still under warranty. What you've lost is the relationship with someone who knows your specific system and is obligated to show up when something goes wrong. That's what you need to replace — and that's exactly what Solarama does.

Step One: Don't Panic. Check Your Monitoring Portal.

Before you do anything else, log into your system's monitoring portal. If you have Enphase, that's Enlighten . If you have SolarEdge, it's the mySolarEdge app or monitoring dashboard. Your login credentials are yours — they don't disappear when your installer does.

What you're looking for:

• Is the system actively producing power today?
• Are there any red or yellow alerts on individual microinverters or on the main inverter?
• Does production look consistent with what it was when the system was first installed, accounting for season?
• Are there any panels or microinverters that show zero output while the rest are working?

If everything looks green and production seems normal, your immediate crisis is lower than you think. But normal-looking data doesn't mean your system is operating at full efficiency — it just means it's producing something. Subtle underperformance can hide in the data for months before it shows up as a noticeably high utility bill.

If you're seeing alerts, errors, or significant drops in production, that's the system telling you something needs attention.

Step Two: Find Out Where Your System Actually Stands

This is where most homeowners in this situation get stuck. You don't know what you don't know. Is the production drop normal seasonal variation, or is a microinverter failing? Is that error code on your SolarEdge a minor communication glitch, or is your inverter approaching failure? Are your panels just dirty from oak pollen — which blankets Central Florida from February through April — or is something more serious going on?

Solarama offers a Remote System Check for $50 . We pull data directly from your monitoring platform, analyze production patterns against expected output for your system size, location, and panel orientation, and flag anything that looks like degradation, equipment issues, or efficiency losses. You get a written report that tells you exactly where your system stands and what, if anything, needs attention.

Fifty dollars for a clear picture of a system you've invested $20,000–$40,000 in is not a hard call.

If you're not sure whether your system is performing the way it should be based on your utility bills, start with our Free Bill Evaluation — $0, no obligation. Share your last two or three Duke Energy or OUC bills, tell us your system size, and we'll tell you whether your production numbers make sense. It's a quick gut-check that costs you nothing.

The Real Danger: Waiting

Florida is not a forgiving environment for unmonitored solar equipment. Here's what actually happens when a system goes unserviced:

Heat Degradation Compounds

Rooftop temperatures in Central Florida regularly exceed 140°F in summer. Inverters, particularly string inverters mounted on or near the roof, are operating at the edge of their thermal design limits for months at a time. A microinverter that's starting to fail under that stress will take neighboring microinverters with it faster than one in a cooler climate. Small problems become expensive problems here on a compressed timeline.

Wildlife Access Goes Unchecked

Squirrels, raccoons, and birds — all regular visitors to Central Florida rooftops — love the space under solar panels. Squirrels in particular chew through DC wiring with no particular agenda, creating arc fault risks and production losses. Iguana populations across South and Central Florida have been steadily moving north; their nesting habits can cause similar damage. Without a service relationship, nobody's checking your conduit runs or under-panel wiring for the signs of intrusion that a technician would catch on a routine visit.

Monitoring Gaps Become Billing Surprises

Duke Energy charges most Central Florida suburban customers around 18.1 cents per kilowatt-hour . A 10kW system that's operating at 80% capacity instead of full output costs you roughly $300–$500 per year in lost offset, depending on your usage profile. Over three years without anyone catching it, that's real money. The system that "seems fine" is quietly costing you.

Step Three: Establish a Service Relationship That Sticks

What you actually need — more than any single repair — is a service company that will be there when something goes wrong. Not a company chasing new installation contracts who treats service calls as an afterthought. A company whose entire business is built around ongoing support.

Solarama LLC was built for exactly this. We service Orange, Lake, Seminole, and Polk counties, working with Enphase, SolarEdge, SMA, and every other major inverter brand. We're intimately familiar with the equipment installed during the 2019–2022 boom — the same era most of the now-closed installers were operating. We know what those systems look like, what fails first, and what to watch for.

We're licensed (CVC57175) and open seven days a week, because solar problems don't limit themselves to weekday business hours.

What to Do Right Now: A Clear Checklist

1. Log into your monitoring portal (Enphase Enlighten, mySolarEdge, or your installer's monitoring app) and screenshot any alerts or anomalies.
2. Locate your original installation documents — particularly the equipment list, which will tell you your inverter brand and panel model. If you can't find them, your monitoring portal will show your equipment.
3. Pull your last three utility bills and compare them to the same months from the prior year. A significant increase without a change in usage habits is a signal.
4. Book a Free Bill Evaluation with Solarama to get a baseline read on whether your production is making sense relative to your bills.
5. Schedule a Remote System Check ($50) to get a detailed analysis of your monitoring data and a written report on system health.
6. If the Remote System Check surfaces any hardware issues, we'll walk you through repair options, manufacturer warranty claims, and next steps — clearly, without pressure.

You're Not Stuck. You Just Need the Right Next Call.

The solar installer closing on you felt like a betrayal — and in some ways, it was. But the equipment on your roof is still yours, still likely under manufacturer warranty, and almost certainly still producing power. What you've lost is a service relationship. That's replaceable.

What you need now is a partner who picks up the phone, knows Central Florida's climate and utilities, and treats service as the core business — not an afterthought. That's Solarama. We ensure uninterrupted solar operation for systems we installed and for systems we inherited from companies that couldn't keep that promise.

Start with the free check-in. Book your Free Bill Evaluation or schedule a Remote System Check today at solarama.us/book. Or call us at 407-900-6055 . We're here seven days a week, and we'll give you a straight answer about where your system stands.

You've already been let down once. That's not happening again.