Your solar company stopped responding. Documentation is the lever.

By Olivier Beauchemin · 2026-08-18 · v1

You've called. You've emailed. Somebody promised a manager would get back to you, and nobody did. Weeks of that will make anyone furious, and what stings most is how powerless it feels. You paid for this system. It's bolted to your roof. And you can't get a straight answer about it from the people who put it there.

So let me say the useful thing first: calling more probably won't fix it, and that isn't because you haven't pushed hard enough. It's structural. Once your system is installed and financed, the sale is finished and service is just a cost on somebody's spreadsheet. What moves a company in that position is a written record that makes ignoring you more expensive than answering you.

You're also nowhere near alone. In Massachusetts, homeowners filed more than 200 complaints against solar installers with the Attorney General's office in a single year, with "poor customer service" and "the runaround" recurring in the record. One company alone drew roughly 170 complaints since 2023, more than any other solar company in the state.

So let's build your record, in the order that gets a package somebody acts on.

Step 1: get it in writing today

Phone calls aren't evidence. Send an email that states the problem in one paragraph, says what you're asking for, and asks for a written answer by a specific date. Keep it factual and keep the anger out of it. You aren't writing to persuade a support rep. You're writing page one of a file a regulator or an attorney may read later.

Already had phone conversations? Summarize them in that email. "On July 14 your technician told me nine of my fourteen panels were never connected" is a useful sentence to have in writing, sent to the other party, unrebutted.

Step 2: pull your own production data before anything changes

Export the monthly production history from your monitoring portal, and export it rather than screenshotting it. Portals get reconfigured, accounts get transferred when a company is acquired, and installers who go out of business take their portals with them. The data you can prove you had is the data you exported while you still had access.

If your installer has been holding your monitoring credentials, ask for them in writing now. That request, and any refusal, goes in the file too.

Step 3: get an independent expected-output number

This is the step that changes the conversation, and it's the one easiest to skip.

Saying the system is underperforming is an opinion. Saying it produced 7,798 kilowatt-hours over the guarantee year against an independently modeled expectation of 9,900 for this array under the weather that actually occurred, a 21 percent shortfall against a guarantee with a 10 percent threshold, is a claim. The first one invites a brush-off. The second has to be answered on the merits.

Your expected figure has to come from your real system geometry and real historical weather, not from the sales proposal, because the proposal is the document you're disputing. It also has to be auditable. Visible inputs and a checkable method are what turn a number into evidence instead of a second opinion. Our approach is documented in how OwlWatt measures your system.

What the gap is actually worth

Do this arithmetic with your own numbers. The answer tends to be bigger than people expect. Take your estimated annual production, and take the rate off your latest electric bill. As an example only, say a system expected to make 10,000 kWh in a year, at $0.30 per kWh. Use your figures, not these.

OwlWatt costs $9.99 a month, or $87.89 a year. Even the 5% row, $150 a year, is more than the annual subscription. At 10% you're looking at roughly three and a half times the cost.

Now the honest half. OwlWatt doesn't recover this money for you. We measure the gap and document it, and whether a claim goes anywhere depends on your contract and, if it gets that far, on your attorney. So read those figures as what's at stake and what you currently can't see, never as money coming back. And the answer may be that there's no meaningful gap at all. Knowing that is worth something too.

Step 4: build the timeline

A dated timeline does more work than almost anything else you can write, because it turns diffuse frustration into a visible pattern. One page, one line per event:

• Contract date, and the estimated annual production stated in it
• Install date and permission-to-operate date
• The date you first raised the issue, and how
• Every contact since: date, channel, who you spoke to, what they said, what they promised
• Every missed commitment, with the promised date next to the actual outcome
• Site visits, what the technician found, and whether you received a written report

Regulators read timelines. So do attorneys, and so do the escalation teams inside the installer that ordinary support can't reach.

Step 5: escalate in the right order

The installer's formal channel

Check your contract for a named notice address and dispute process, which may not be the support email. Send your package there, by a method that produces a delivery record, and reference the guarantee clause by number.

The equipment manufacturer

Panel and inverter warranties are held by the manufacturer, not the installer, and they survive the installer going out of business. If your problem is hardware, that's a separate path, and often a more responsive one. An equipment warranty is a different instrument from a production guarantee: one covers things that break, the other covers output falling short.

Your state consumer-protection agency

State Attorneys General collect solar complaints, and the aggregate matters. Your complaint may not produce a technician on its own, but patterns across complaints are what drive enforcement, and companies do behave differently once a state file exists. In Massachusetts that's the Attorney General's consumer protection division, and every state has an equivalent.

Your utility, if interconnection is involved

If your issue touches metering, interconnection, or export credit rather than the panels themselves, the utility is the right venue, and your installer honestly may not be able to fix it.

An attorney

If the money is significant and your contract has a guarantee with a stated remedy, you're in contract territory. A licensed attorney in your state can use technical documentation as evidence. We produce the documentation. We don't give legal advice and we don't predict outcomes.

If your installer is gone entirely

Solar installers fail often enough that this needs its own plan. If the company that installed your system no longer exists, the production guarantee can die with it, but the equipment warranties don't: those are held by the panel and inverter manufacturers and claimed directly. Find your serial numbers and the original commissioning report now, while you can still get into the portal.

Common missteps, and why your own contract comes first

Your contract governs, and solar agreements vary a great deal. What follows are patterns that commonly cause homeowners trouble, not rules about your situation. Read your own documents, and take anything with money or legal consequence attached to a licensed attorney in your state.

• Paying the loan may be separate from the dispute. If your financing is a distinct agreement with a distinct party, withholding payment damages your credit without affecting the installer at all. Check who actually holds your loan before treating it as leverage.
• Documenting before anyone modifies the system. A site visit that reconfigures the array changes the very thing you're trying to measure. If your contract requires you to permit access for inspection, this is about sequencing rather than refusing.
• The strongest accusation is rarely the best opener. If the cause turns out to be a rate change or higher household consumption, having alleged fraud costs credibility you may need later. Working through the three causes of a high bill after solar first tends to produce a better conversation.
• Keeping your own copy of the production record. The installer's portal is their system, and your access can end, particularly if they're acquired or go out of business. Exporting beats screenshotting.

None of the above is legal advice, and OwlWatt doesn't give any. We produce technical documentation; what to do with it in a dispute is a question for your attorney.

Why an independent number is the load-bearing part

Every number in your dispute comes from one of two parties with a stake in the answer: the company that sold you the system, and you. No wonder it stalls. A figure from somebody with no interest in either the sale or the claim, computed from published methodology anyone can check, breaks that symmetry.

OwlWatt exists to be that party. We don't install, we don't sell equipment, we take no referral fees from installers, and we have no position on whether your claim succeeds. We connect to your monitoring, compute what your system should have produced, and turn the gap into a claim report with the inputs, the method and the dated evidence attached.

Start with the number

Of the five steps above, four you can do today with a folder and an email client. Step three isn't, and it changes the reply you get.

Get your independent number. And if it turns out your system is performing the way it should, you want to know that too, before you spend another month on hold.

Here is the part that is easy to miss. If your system was commissioned by your installer, the only record of what your roof produced may live in an account they set up and can still reach. Not a copy you hold. Not something you could produce a year from now if the relationship goes sideways or the company stops existing. That is a strange position to be in about your own property, and exporting your own history rather than screenshotting a dashboard is the cheapest thing you can do about it today.

If you aren't yet sure the production gap is real, start with how to tell if your solar panels are underperforming.