Your solar installer has gone bust — what happens to your commercial array?

Start here, because it is the part people get wrong. A solar array is not a subscription. The panels convert light whether or not the company that fitted them still exists, and the electricity keeps reducing what you draw from the grid. A 200kWp array on a warehouse roof does not notice that its installer has been wound up.

What you have lost is support: someone to call when a string drops out, someone whose name is on the monitoring account, and someone on the hook if work was done badly. That is a real problem, but a paperwork problem rather than an emergency. Company failures are not unusual in this sector and there is a well-trodden path back to a supported system. The exception is anything unsafe — scorched cabling, a burning smell, water in an inverter, panels loose on the roof. Treat that as urgent whoever installed it.

"Gone bust" covers several situations and they are not equivalent. GOV.UK explains that administration, a company voluntary arrangement and receivership all allow a company to keep trading, while creditors’ voluntary liquidation and compulsory liquidation close it down — liquidation "legally ends or ‘winds up’ a limited company". A business in administration may still be answering emails, and may even be sold on with its contracts intact. A dissolved company has nobody left to answer.

Check for free on the Companies House service at GOV.UK, which gives the registered address, current and resigned officers, document images, previous company names and insolvency information. Ten minutes there tells you whether to keep chasing, whether an insolvency practitioner has been appointed and is worth writing to, or whether to stop spending time on it. If a practitioner is named, ask in writing whether the maintenance obligations have been assigned to anyone — occasionally a book of contracts is sold on.

This is the most valuable thing to understand, and it is routinely misreported. The product and performance warranties on your panels, and the warranty on your inverters, are given by the manufacturer, not by the company that bolted them to your roof. The manufacturer is a separate business with its own obligations, so the installer failing does not in itself extinguish them.

Claiming is where it gets practical. A manufacturer will typically want the serial numbers, evidence of purchase and installation date, and often commissioning data showing the equipment was set up correctly. Some certificates require registration within a set window; some are worded in favour of the original purchaser rather than the current building owner, and transferability varies by manufacturer. Many will only process a claim submitted through an approved installer. Read what the warranty actually pays for, too: it commonly covers the replacement part but not the labour, scaffold, crane hire or roof access needed to fit it — on a large commercial roof, often the bigger number.

Because the wording differs so much, read your own certificates rather than rely on any general rule, and take advice where the sums justify it. Our guide to commercial solar warranties and insurance covers what each one does.

A workmanship warranty is a promise the installer made about its own labour — flashings, cable routing, terminations, mounting. It is a contract with that company. Where the company has been dissolved there is generally nobody left to hold to it; where it is in liquidation you are one unsecured creditor among many, with a claim of uncertain value. Treat an installer-only workmanship warranty as worth very little once the installer has gone.

The exception is where it was backed by insurance. An insurance-backed guarantee is a policy issued by an insurer that sits behind the installer’s promise and is designed to respond precisely when the installer stops trading. If one exists, the party to approach is the insurer named on the policy. Look for a separate certificate or policy schedule issued at handover, carrying an insurer’s name and a policy number — not just a letterhead promise. Check the finance and purchase file as well as the technical handover pack.

Be realistic about the odds. The best-known UK financial-protection frameworks are built around domestic work: TrustMark describes its scheme as financial protection for homeowners, covering work "in or around their home", with a minimum of two years’ post-completion workmanship cover if a business ceases trading. A commercial buyer of a 100–500kWp array often has no such scheme behind it at all, and whether any cover exists depends entirely on whether a policy was bought and what it says. Where there was insurance behind the failed company there may be a route to that insurer, and a dissolved company can sometimes be restored to the register so a claim can be pursued — GOV.UK sets out an administrative route for directors and shareholders within six years of dissolution, and a court route otherwise. Both are legal rather than technical questions, and both cost money, so take advice first.

On many commercial installations the monitoring portal is registered to the installer’s account, with the owner given a read-only login at best. When the installer disappears that account can go with them, and you lose sight of a system you still own. Solar Energy UK’s Rooftop O&M Guidelines 3.0 treat monitoring as a core part of looking after a rooftop system, and an unwatched array can lose a string for months before anyone notices on a bill.

There are three routes, in increasing order of pain. First, contact the inverter manufacturer’s technical support with proof that you own the building and equipment, the plant or site ID and the inverter and datalogger serial numbers, and ask them to transfer the account — most major manufacturers have a change-of-ownership process, though every brand handles it differently and there is no single UK procedure. Second, re-register the datalogger or communications gateway to a fresh account, which normally needs physical access to the device, its registration key and the installer-level access a qualified provider holds. Third, replace the monitoring hardware. That regains live visibility but loses the historic data in the old account, so exhaust the first two routes first.

Do this before you brief anyone, because it changes the price and quality of every quote that follows. Work through your project file, your solicitor’s completion papers if the building was bought with solar already on it, and the original handover pack. Look for: the Distribution Network Operator correspondence, including the G99 application and the acceptance or connection agreement; the electrical installation certificate and any later condition report; the commissioning and handover pack, with string test results and as-built drawings; panel and inverter makes, models and serial numbers; warranty certificates and registration confirmations; any O&M or monitoring contract; the roof or structural sign-off and wind-loading calculation; and an MCS certificate if one was issued.

Photograph the inverter labels, and the module labels if that can be done safely from ground level or a gantry. If the pack is thin, a provider can rebuild much of it from the equipment on site and from testing — but every document you find is one nobody has to pay to recreate, and serial numbers in particular are what make a manufacturer claim possible at all.

One thing you almost certainly have not lost: if the array is registered for the Feed-in Tariff or a Smart Export Guarantee tariff, those payments come from a licensed electricity supplier, not from your installer. Ofgem confirms FIT payments are made by FIT Licensees — the licensed suppliers that registered the application — and that SEG payments are calculated from export meter readings. Keep submitting readings and those payments should continue as before.

Check your facilities management schedule of services, because this is where commercial arrays quietly fall through the floor. FM contracts are commonly written around the building fabric and its services — roof covering, gutters, lighting, heating, electrical distribution — and the PV array was installed later, under a separate contract, by a different party. Read the scope wording rather than assume: if the array is not named, your FM provider is probably not looking after it, and now neither is anyone else.

The practical next step is a takeover survey: an independent assessment of what you have and what condition it is in, before anyone quotes for ongoing maintenance. Our guide to what a takeover survey should cover sets out the checklist in inspection order, and our solar O&M takeover page is where to start an enquiry.

PPA Funding, operated by DVC Group Ltd in Shrewsbury, is an independent introducer. We do not carry out surveys or maintenance and we do not run a standing panel of firms. When you enquire, we source and vet a suitable specialist for your site and pass your enquiry on; the provider carries out the survey and contracts with you directly. Tell us the array size, building type, how the roof is accessed and what you know about the original company, and we will match that to a specialist who can quote.