what to do when your solar PV installer goes out of business?

[Sunking]

The solar bubble has popped. Lots of installers got rich and disappeared. That is what happens when there is free money.

[jclimber99]

Forgot to say that in addition to the one panel with lower power I have another panel that is producing no power at all. This seems more likely to be a total microinverter fail so I may just call 512Solar to fix that one since the repair may be fully covered by the Enphase reimbursement (if they approve RMA beforehand).

[jclimber99]

Hello. I had a 5kW system (Conergy panels, Enphase M215 microinverters) installed back in 2012 by Standard Renewable Energy (SRE3). I had a fuse blow out in 2013 and it took a month for SRE3 to send someone out to fix the system. Last Fall I noticed (using Enphase website info) that one of my panels was not achieving full power so I called SRE3 for service. Only got an answering machine, but a few days later a local installer called me to get more information. They had gotten my number from the person who answers the SRE3 voicemail. I thought at first that SRE3 was still in business and was going to cover the service call. I gave Enphase access to the local company (512Solar) and they filed an RMA request with Enphase. Enphase rejected it because they thought it was a DC voltage issue. So 512Solar at that time said they needed to go on-site to diagnose the cause of the low power and gave me their labor rates ($150/hr).

Now I realized I would only get reimbursed via the vendor warranties. I tried to get a hold of SRE3 but that was a dead-end, only got one email back from a person at SRE3 who explained that they refer all service calls to 512Solar. But web searches show no active contacts for SRE3 and further calls/emails were not returned. I can't find my original warranty to see if it was insurance-backed or not.

So now I figure I'm responsible for paying for any repairs less vendor reimbursements. Enphase will pay $125 for a trip and one-inverter swap, and an extra $25/inverter swap on the same trip. I've been calling around getting labor rates and they vary from $75/hr to $150/hr, some companies charge a trip charge on top of that.

Any recommendations on what else I should be doing? I'm currently generating more credits from my panels than what I pay (local energy company is not net-metering, they charge you like anybody else for your usage, then pay you back a flat rate for your generation, this year payback is 10.3 cents/kwhr) and have a negative balance so it's not super-critical to get it fixed quickly.

Thanks,
-Jason