The single most important question an Alberta solar buyer can ask is not "how much does it cost" or "what panels do you use" or even "what's your warranty." It is: "Will this company still answer the phone in year 20?"
Solar is a 25-year relationship. Panels last 30 years. Microinverters last 25. Batteries last 10+. Inverters need replacement once. Every one of those events — expected and unexpected — depends on someone being at the other end of a phone, willing to come look at your roof, with the legal authority to honour the warranty in your contract.
In 2024 the US residential solar industry experienced 100+ bankruptcies, a level it hadn't seen in nearly 20 years. Wood Mackenzie reported a 31% drop in residential installs year-over-year. SunPower — one of the largest and oldest solar brands in North America — filed Chapter 11 in August 2024 and shut its customer-support phone line on September 20, 2024. Customers who'd paid $25,000–$60,000 for systems went to bed installer-warrantied and woke up orphaned.
This guide explains exactly what happens when an installer disappears, what's actually covered (and what isn't), what Alberta-specific consumer protections exist, and the nine longevity-focused questions to ask before you sign anything. We've installed 500+ residential systems since 2018 and answered every one of those phones every working day — this is the post we wish every Alberta solar buyer read before signing a contract with anyone, including us.
The 2024–2025 reality: who actually went under
This is not theoretical. These are the major US residential solar collapses in the last 18 months that affected hundreds of thousands of customers:
| Company | Event | Customers affected |
|---|---|---|
| SunPower | Chapter 11 bankruptcy filed August 2024. Customer support shut off September 20, 2024. Complete Solaria acquired select assets in September 2024 but did NOT assume warranty liability for systems installed before September 30, 2024. | Hundreds of thousands |
| ADT Solar (formerly SunPro) | ADT exited residential solar in January 2024 after a $89M EBITDA loss in the first nine months of 2023. Stopped accepting new projects March 2024. | Hundreds of thousands |
| Titan Solar Power | Chapter 7 bankruptcy filed June 13, 2024. Was one of the top residential installers in the US. | Tens of thousands |
| Sunnova | Chapter 11 bankruptcy filed June 2025 after years of mounting debt and softening residential demand. | Hundreds of thousands of leased systems |
| Mosaic | Chapter 11 in 2025 — major residential solar lender backing $15B+ in home energy loans. | Hundreds of thousands of financed systems |
| ~100+ smaller US installers | Bankruptcies and closures across 2024 — the highest count in nearly 20 years per industry tracking. | Tens of thousands collectively |
Canada has seen fewer high-profile collapses simply because the Canadian residential solar market is smaller, but the underlying pressures — rising interest rates, tighter financing, declining new-install volume, thin operating margins on residential work — are identical. The California Solar & Storage Association reported in 2024 that 75% of California's rooftop solar companies were at "high risk" of bankruptcy.
Alberta installers are not immune. A reasonable rule of thumb: if a residential solar company hasn't survived a full Alberta winter business cycle, hasn't survived an interest-rate hike, and hasn't survived the post-Greener-Homes-Grant demand drop, they haven't yet survived the actual stress test the industry is putting installers through right now.
What actually breaks when your installer disappears
This is the part most homeowners never think about. There are three things that go away the day the installer files for bankruptcy or simply closes the doors:
1. Your workmanship warranty. The single most important paper guarantee on your install — that the wiring is correct, the conduit is sealed, the roof penetrations are watertight, the racking is properly torqued — comes from the installer, not the manufacturer. When the installer ceases to exist, that warranty has no legal entity to collect from. Industry sources are blunt about it: "the installer's workmanship warranty is usually voided upon bankruptcy." ADT Solar publicly stated they would honour their 25-year workmanship and 25-year power-production guarantees post-shutdown, but customers report that without an operational service team, claim resolution has been very difficult in practice.
2. Your roof leak / leak-proof warranty. This is the one homeowners feel most acutely because the consequences are immediate and physical. Solar panels are mounted with bolts that penetrate your roof. Done well, those penetrations are sealed forever. Done poorly — or aged poorly — they leak. If a leak happens five years after install and your installer is gone, you pay. Homeowners in this situation routinely find their original 25- or 50-year roof warranty voided by the original solar penetrations, which means they're paying out of pocket for the roof and the leak repair.
3. Your future-expansion path and monitoring. Adding a battery or an EV charger to existing solar requires the new contractor to understand the existing system, integrate cleanly, and pull permits. If your original installer is gone, the next contractor has to assess the existing work cold — and they will charge for that diligence. Production monitoring is a smaller pain: when SunPower's app went dark on September 20, 2024, customers lost visibility into their own panel-level production data overnight. The panels kept making electricity; the homeowners just couldn't see how much.
What does not break, immediately:
Your panels keep producing. The system doesn't "phone home" to the installer. It will keep generating electricity and earning net-metering credits as long as the equipment is intact and the grid connection is intact. Your bi-directional meter and your retailer relationship continue unchanged.
Your manufacturer warranties survive — usually. The 25-year LONGi panel warranty, the 25-year APsystems microinverter warranty, the 10-year EP Cube battery warranty are all issued by the equipment manufacturers directly. They survive your installer's bankruptcy. They do not survive the manufacturer's bankruptcy — which is why we install LONGi (the world's largest panel manufacturer), APsystems (a publicly-traded company), and EP Cube (a major Chinese battery manufacturer with global distribution). The single biggest red flag in panel selection is a small or financially-shaky manufacturer.
The catch on manufacturer warranties: they are honoured directly by the manufacturer, but most claims require a certified installer to physically inspect, file paperwork, and replace the equipment. Orphaned customers find that the part is covered but the labour is not. A failed microinverter that's $400 in parts can become a $1,000–$1,500 service call once an unrelated installer has to drive to your house, climb the roof, swap the unit, and file the warranty paperwork.
What Alberta protects you against (more than you'd think)
Alberta's consumer-protection framework for residential contractors is genuinely meaningful, and it's worth knowing what you're entitled to before you sign anything.
Prepaid Contracting Business Licence (PCBL). Per Service Alberta, any company collecting a deposit before completing residential construction or maintenance work is required to hold a valid Prepaid Contracting Business Licence and post a security bond. The bond typically starts around $10,000 and scales with the size of the business. The bond is the homeowner's recourse: if a licensed contractor takes your deposit and disappears, you can claim against the bond. A few important practical points:
- Ask any Alberta solar installer to provide their PCBL number before you pay a deposit.
- Verify the licence on the Service Alberta website — licences can be suspended or revoked.
- The bond is not a complete refund mechanism — it's a pool that's distributed across all affected customers if a contractor goes under. But it's a meaningful guardrail against fly-by-night operators.
Alberta Solar Business Code of Conduct. Administered by Solar Alberta (the provincial solar trade association), the Code is a voluntary industry standard. Signatory installers commit to written contracts with clear scope of work and timelines, deposit limits, cooling-off periods, transparent disclosures of equipment, financing, and warranty terms, and binding complaint resolution through Solar Alberta. Ask whether your installer is a signatory and verify on solaralberta.ca.
Service Alberta complaints process. If a contractor takes your money and fails to deliver, or breaches the Consumer Protection Act, you can file a complaint with Service Alberta. The process can be slow but it does have teeth — serial offenders get their PCBL pulled, and that ends their ability to operate legally in the province.
Alberta Electrical Code (Section 64). Every Alberta solar install must comply with Section 64 of the Canadian Electrical Code (with Alberta amendments) and pull a city or municipal electrical permit. The permit creates a paper trail and forces an inspection by a third party (the municipality), which is your final check on workmanship quality at the moment of install. If your installer disappears five years later, the permit and inspection record stay with your property.
9 longevity questions to ask before you sign
Cheap quotes hide a lot. Five years out, what you actually paid for is the contractor's ability to still be there. Ask every installer these nine questions in writing before you put a deposit down:
1. When was the company incorporated, and what is the legal entity name? An installer that's been operating for 12 months under a year-old corporation is a very different risk profile from one that's been operating since 2018 under a multi-year-old corporation. Ask for the legal name. Look it up on the Alberta Corporate Registry.
2. Do you hold a current Alberta Prepaid Contracting Business Licence? If yes, ask for the licence number. If no, do not pay a deposit.
3. Are you a signatory of the Alberta Solar Business Code of Conduct? Voluntary but signals self-discipline. Verify on solaralberta.ca.
4. Who actually does the install — your full-time employees or subcontractors? Subcontracted installs are not inherently bad, but they introduce an additional point of failure: if the subcontractor disappears, the workmanship warranty trail can break even if the prime contractor survives. In-house labour means one company is on the hook for everything.
5. Who is your Master Electrician of record, and is that person on staff full-time? Alberta requires a Master Electrician to sign off on every electrical install before Permission to Operate. If the company shares a Master Electrician with five other companies under a "consulting" arrangement, the odds of that Master Electrician answering the phone in year 10 are very low.
6. How many residential systems have you installed in Alberta, and over what time period? "We've done 500+ since 2018" is very different from "we've done 500+ since 2024." Ask for the time series, not just the total.
7. What is the workmanship warranty length, and which legal entity stands behind it? 1- and 2-year workmanship warranties are common and weak. 5-year is strong. 10-year means the installer is genuinely expecting to be here in 10 years. Get the warranty in writing on the same legal entity name you verified in question 1.
8. What is the leak-proof / roof penetration warranty, and which legal entity stands behind it? "Lifetime" leak-proof is meaningful only if the legal entity behind it is reasonably likely to outlive the panels. Verify this is a written commitment, not a verbal one.
9. What is your standard procedure when a customer's panel or microinverter fails 10 years from now? Listen carefully. A real answer covers: the diagnostic approach, who climbs the roof, who files the manufacturer claim, what the customer pays out of pocket, and the typical turnaround time. A vague answer is the answer.
For the full 11-question contractor screen including subcontracting tells, equipment-specification audit, and Alberta-specific permitting questions, see How to Choose a Solar Installer in Alberta.
How Stellar Upgrades stacks up against those nine questions
This post would be hollow without showing our own homework. Here's how we answer the nine questions ourselves — verifiable on our public corporate filings and on solaralberta.ca:
| Question | Stellar's answer |
|---|---|
| 1. Incorporation / entity name | Right Wire Technologies Ltd. — Alberta-incorporated 2022 (verifiable on the Alberta Corporate Registry). Founded by Jordan Walsh as a sole proprietorship in 2018; formally incorporated 2022; trading under the Stellar Upgrades brand since 2025 when PJ Singh joined as Co-Founder. 8 years of continuous Alberta solar operating history under the same Red Seal Master Electrician, 4 years under the current corporate entity — meaning the Ltd. has already lived through the exact 2024–2025 industry conditions that took down others. |
| 2. PCBL | Verified Alberta Prepaid Contracting Business Licence on file. Provided on request before any deposit. |
| 3. Solar Alberta Code of Conduct | Confirm current signatory status with us at any time; we provide the certificate. |
| 4. Subcontracting | Zero. 8 full-time in-house electricians. We have not subcontracted a single residential install since founding in 2018. |
| 5. Master Electrician | Co-founder Jordan Walsh holds a Red Seal Master Electrician certification (issued 2016, 15+ years in trade) and personally inspects or leads every install. Full-time, on staff. |
| 6. Install volume | 500+ residential installs since 2018. The track record is publicly visible in our projects gallery and in 5.0-star Google reviews with zero negative reviews. |
| 7. Workmanship warranty | 5-year (Standard package) or 10-year (Premium package). Backed by Right Wire Technologies Ltd. as the installing legal entity. |
| 8. Leak-proof warranty | Lifetime leak-proof guarantee on roof penetrations. Backed by Right Wire Technologies Ltd., supported by RT-MINI II AlphaSeal butyl flashing (no pilot holes, self-flashing) with ICC-ESR 3575 certification. |
| 9. Year-10 service procedure | You call (780) 200-5265. We dispatch one of our 8 in-house electricians to diagnose. We file the manufacturer claim, swap the part, and bill the customer only for non-warrantied labour where applicable. No third parties involved. |
The trust anchor is not any one of these answers in isolation — it's that they're all true at the same time, today, on a single legal entity. Multi-year operating history, in-house labour, a Master Electrician on staff full-time, a meaningful workmanship warranty backed by the entity that did the work. Cheap quotes from new entities or subcontractor-heavy operations look identical on the price line and very different on the year-10 line.
We're not saying we'll never have a hard year. The macro is real for everyone. We're saying we've designed the company to absorb hard years — in-house labour, in-house master electrician, conservative growth, no leveraged-finance products on our balance sheet, decline ~10% of assessments when the math doesn't work for the homeowner — precisely so that the answer to "will Stellar pick up the phone in 2045" stays yes regardless of what the broader industry does.
Already orphaned by another installer? Here's the playbook
If you're reading this because your installer has already gone out of business, you're not stuck. The system is yours. The manufacturer warranties on the equipment likely survive. Here's the five-step recovery sequence we walk orphaned customers through:
1. Locate your paperwork. Find your original purchase contract, equipment serial numbers, monitoring app credentials, and your micro-generation interconnection agreement with EPCOR / FortisAlberta / ATCO. If you don't have copies, your distribution company can usually re-issue the interconnection agreement.
2. Confirm what's still covered. Identify the manufacturer of your panels, microinverters or string inverter, and battery if applicable. Look up each manufacturer's warranty terms. Most major manufacturers (LONGi, REC, Canadian Solar, Q CELLS, Trina, JA Solar; Enphase, APsystems, SolarEdge; Tesla, EP Cube, FranklinWH) honour their warranties directly — you don't lose coverage because the original installer is gone.
3. Book a system health check. Have a reputable Alberta installer come out and document: visual condition of panels, microinverter status (if accessible via app or by reading data), production trend vs. expected, condition of roof penetrations, condition of conduit and electrical work, any code or grounding issues. Document everything in writing — this becomes the new baseline.
4. Plan for the future you wanted anyway. Most orphaned solar customers eventually want a battery, an EV charger, or a system expansion. The old installer's absence isn't a barrier to any of those — the new contractor just integrates with the existing system, pulls a permit for the new work, and submits its own paperwork to your distribution company.
5. Document and disclose. Before any new contractor begins work on an orphaned system, document any pre-existing roof leaks, electrical issues, or production problems. This protects both parties from disputes about whether the new work caused or merely revealed an existing issue.
Stellar Upgrades does free system health checks for orphaned Alberta solar customers, and we install batteries (EP Cube in 9.9 / 13.3 / 16.6 / 19.9 kWh capacities, $19,381–$24,723 installed) and Wallbox Pulsar Plus EV chargers ($3,499 for 40A, $3,999 for 48A, installed) onto existing solar regardless of who installed the original system. Book the free assessment or call (780) 200-5265.
Bottom line
The cheapest solar quote in Alberta in May 2026 is almost certainly not the best solar quote in Alberta in May 2046. Solar is a 25-year relationship priced once. The questions that determine whether you regret your decision are not about per-watt pricing or which microinverter brand is on the spec sheet — they're about whether the company you sign with is structured to outlast the contract.
100+ US bankruptcies in 2024 should be a wake-up call. The industry is consolidating, weak operators are being shaken out, and the customers left behind are mostly the ones who chose on price.
If you've already signed with another installer, this post is your audit checklist. If you're still shopping, ask the nine questions in writing before you pay anyone a deposit. And if you want a system designed and installed by an Alberta company that's actually structured for the 25-year relationship — in-house labour, Master Electrician on staff, multi-year operating history, written warranties on the same legal entity that did the work — book the free assessment and we'll show you the math.
Sources: Electrek (SunPower Chapter 11 coverage, August 2024), EnergySage (orphaned-installer guidance), Solar Insure (industry bankruptcy tracker), Wood Mackenzie (US residential solar install volume reporting), Solar Power World (ADT Solar exit reporting), Solar Alberta (Alberta Solar Business Code of Conduct), Service Alberta (Prepaid Contracting Business Licence framework), California Solar & Storage Association (industry risk reporting), Bennett Legal & SolarDispute.com (workmanship warranty mechanics on bankruptcy), Greenlancer & NerdWallet (orphaned customer playbooks). Industry data verified May 2026.