Solar bust: Bankruptcies leave some solar customers with broken panels, faulty systems

The solar panels Christina Jimenez got four years ago for her home in Fort Worth came with a warranty.

"If anything goes wrong, they told me to contact the installer, which would be TriSmart," she said.

When a panel went out last February and then another ten stopped working in April, she reached out to the company that sold her the system.

Fourteen e-mails and dozens of phone calls later, she says she never got through to anyone. So she turned to the internet in search of answers.

"I found out on Reddit they'd closed TriSmart," she said. "A lot of employees got axed a week before Christmas and they were closing the business."  

Jimenez is just one of a growing number of solar customers across the country left in limbo following a company's closure or bankruptcy. 

Nearly 6 million homes in America now have solar panels, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Over the last few years, roughly 100 solar businesses nationwide have reportedly closed, including big names servicing Texas customers like Freedom Forever, Sunnova and Solar Mosaic. Industry experts attribute the bankruptcies to the elimination of a federal tax credit and an increase in customers defaulting on their solar loans.

The Center for Responsible Lending reports many of the loans issued were risky ones and has compared practices by the nation's leading residential solar energy financers to the predatory methods of the subprime mortgage lenders that triggered the 2008 financial crisis.  

An increasingly common predicament 

TriSmart itself hasn't publicly confirmed it has shut down.

In an email to customers in December, the CEO wrote it was "making structured updates," during which he warned the main customer service line wouldn't be staffed.

Online, TriSmart still looks like it's open for business. Its website boasts it's the "#1 Residential Solar Installer in Texas" with more than 17,000 projects.

Messages from CBS News Texas have gone unanswered, and at least three of the six executives listed on the site haven't worked there since December, according to their individual LinkedIn pages.

In January, former vice president of field operations Doug Parks wrote on his page, "I'm currently furloughed, as TriSmart Solar has paused business operations with no return date." 

Even the app Jimenez uses to track her solar panels' energy production lists the company as out of business.

Jimenez says she did eventually get a call in response to a message she sent TriSmart on Facebook from a man claiming to represent the company and promising to help.

"The guy said, 'we're overwhelmed because we have a backlog of people we're trying to fix,'" she said.

She said his lack of knowledge about her account left her unsure whether to believe him. Weeks later, no one has shown up to fix her panels.  

Customers still on the hook for payments

Whether TriSmart is operating or not, bills for its solar panels are still arriving every month because Goodleap, the company that financed Jimenez's $67,000 loan for the panels, is still open.

Goodleap, which focuses on financing residential solar energy projects, has responded to bankruptcies in the industry. Its Chief of Marketing and Communications, Jesse Comart, said it now has a team "to help customers where their contractor is no longer available".   

He told CBS News Texas he could make sure Jimenez gets the help she needs. 

Jimenez isn't just trying to find answers for herself. Her mother, Ana Gonzales, in Odessa, is in the same predicament. She got her solar panels from a company called Lumio, which declared bankruptcy in 2024.

"Nobody, nobody told us, nobody, you know. They, I didn't get a letter. I didn't get a phone call, nothing," said Gonzales.

One of her panels stopped working, too, last year.

"I didn't have anyone to come help me. Yeah, I don't want to go through that again," she said.

Now, on top of monthly payments to her lender, Gonzales said she is shelling out $300 a year for a service plan so someone will fix her panels if they go out.

Jimenez said another company quoted her a $700 service fee just to look at hers, with no guarantee of working on it.

Nowhere to turn 

Customers left with orphaned solar systems can find themselves with no one to turn to for help. 

Attorney Neal Prevost has spent the past few years exclusively serving clients fighting high-dollar solar contracts.  

"When your seller goes out of business, you don't have anyone to call. You don't have anyone to come service your panels. You don't have any idea how to contact your manufacturers," said Prevost. "One of the lenders told me in a deposition that 40% of all of their installers have gone out of business."

Customers who are still paying off their loans are typically left with what's called a UCC lien, Prevost said, giving the lender a stake in the property.

"I thought they had the wrong people," said Terry Pullum, who thought there must be some mistake when he got a call from a solar company he'd never heard of.

The panels on his home in Seagoville were bought and financed from Sunnova, but he said SunStrong warned it could seize their home if he didn't start paying them off.

"They informed me that SunStrong had taken over Sunnova after Sunnova went bankrupt and that they wouldn't take my American Express business card any longer," he said. "The customer service people said if I don't pay these two bills that I'm behind and get caught up, that they have the right to foreclose on my house."

A spokesperson for SunStrong said it has stepped in when other companies have declared bankruptcy to keep solar systems "online, productive, and delivering electricity to millions across the country."

The company said customers are notified by e-mail when their contracts are transferred to SunStrong.

The company also said it does not initiate foreclosures on customers' homes, but may hold a UCC to show "that there is an outstanding contract that needs to be settled prior to selling the home."

"Take them off my roof"

Some customers have decided to stop paying back their loans.

"Who in their right mind would pay for something that is absolutely not working?" said another former Sunnova customer, Jason Pelchat, in an interview with WFSB, a CBS station in Connecticut.

Pelchat said, despite continued problems with his panels, SunStrong has pressured him to catch up on missed payments, and it's taking a toll on his credit. 

We asked attorney Neal Prevost if it's possible to argue there is no obligation to pay a company that didn't initiate your loan.

"No, because notes are assignable and they've just been assigned and the assignment is legal, so you can't say 'I don't know you I'm not paying.' Oh, I wish we could," he said.

Prevost said it is possible, though, to take lenders to arbitration and get contracts canceled. He estimated 75% of customers are successful in getting some restitution. The actual statistics are difficult to confirm, as settlements almost always remain private.

Pullum said his panels were already failing to live up to the promises Sunnova made, though SunStrong says it continues to operate "within the expected production range" outlined in his contract. 

At this point, Pullum said he just wants to be released from her contract and for the panels to be removed from his roof.

Jimenez wants out of her contract, too, and to warn others before it happens to them.

"I want reform in the solar industry so that this doesn't happen," she said.