Solar companies go out of business. It happens in every construction trade, and it has happened often enough in solar that a meaningful number of commercial facilities are now operating systems nobody is responsible for. If that is your situation — the installer's phone is disconnected, the monitoring login stopped working, nobody has been on the roof in years — the system is usually more recoverable than it feels. Here is how to work through it. ## First, find out what you actually own Start by assembling documentation. You need more of it than you probably think, and it is easier to gather now than after something fails. **As-built drawings and the single-line diagram.** What is installed, how it is wired, where the disconnects are. **Equipment list with model and serial numbers.** Modules, inverters, racking, monitoring hardware, and any storage equipment. **Interconnection agreement and permission to operate.** These establish your relationship with the utility and the rate structure your system operates under. **Permits and final inspection records.** From the local building department. **Warranty documentation.** For equipment, workmanship, and roof. If you cannot find these internally, several are recoverable from third parties. Your building department has permit records. Your utility has the interconnection agreement. Equipment manufacturers can often confirm warranty registration by serial number. ## Understand which warranties survived and which did not This is the part owners most often get wrong, in both directions. **Equipment warranties generally survive.** Module and inverter warranties are issued by manufacturers, not by your installer. If the manufacturer is still in business, those warranties typically remain valid regardless of what happened to the company that installed the equipment. Many are long-duration. The practical catch is process: manufacturer warranties usually cover the part, not the labor to diagnose and replace it, and claims often require documentation the original installer would normally have handled. Recoverable, but it takes work. **Workmanship warranties usually do not survive.** The warranty on installation quality was issued by the company that no longer exists. If a racking attachment fails or a conduit run was done poorly, that is now yours. **Roof warranties depend on the roofing manufacturer, not the solar company.** Worth verifying separately, particularly if penetrations were involved. The takeaway: do not assume you have nothing. Check serial numbers against manufacturer records before concluding the system is out of warranty. ## Get eyes on the system An orphaned array has typically gone without inspection for years. A thorough assessment should cover: **Production versus expectation.** Compare current output against the original design estimate, adjusted for expected degradation. A large gap points to a specific problem worth finding. **Inverter status and fault history.** Inverters are the most common failure point and the most common reason a system quietly produces at reduced output for years without anyone noticing. **Electrical connections and terminations.** Loose or corroded connections create both production loss and fire risk. **Racking and attachments.** Fasteners back out, flashing degrades, and wind loading works on anything that was marginal to begin with. **Roof penetrations.** Leaks around solar attachments often show up in the building long before anyone connects them to the array. **Module condition.** Cracking, delamination, hot spots, and soiling. **Monitoring hardware.** Often the first thing to fail after an installer disappears, because the monitoring platform was tied to their account. ## Reestablishing monitoring If your monitoring went dark, it is usually because the portal account belonged to the installer. Most inverter manufacturers have a process to transfer or reassign a site to a new owner or service provider. It generally requires proof of ownership and equipment serial numbers. This matters more than it sounds. Without monitoring, a failed inverter or a downed string can go unnoticed for months. You are paying the utility for power your system should be producing, and you have no way to know. ## Then decide on ongoing responsibility Once you know what you own and what condition it is in, the real decision is who maintains it going forward. The options are internal facilities staff, an ad hoc break-fix relationship, or a maintenance agreement with a company that takes ownership of the system's performance. Each is defensible depending on the size of the system and the capability of your team. What does not work is the arrangement most orphaned systems fall into by default: nobody. Solar is often sold as maintenance-free, which is close enough to true that neglect does not cause an obvious failure — it causes a slow production decline that never announces itself. ## What we would tell you honestly We take over systems other companies installed, and the assessment is worth doing even if you decide to work with someone else afterward. Knowing your production gap, your warranty position, and your roof condition is valuable information regardless of who ends up holding the wrench. Occasionally the honest answer after an assessment is that a system was poorly designed or installed and that meaningful correction is not economical. We would rather tell you that than sell you maintenance on something that will not perform. If you have a commercial array in Southern California that nobody is currently responsible for, an assessment is a reasonable first step.