Cleaning Up Solar: Why the Industry's Integrity Problem Is Every Ethical Company's Problem

We need to talk about something the solar industry doesn’t talk about enough.

As solar adoption has accelerated — and it has accelerated significantly, with Q1 2026 seeing over $11 billion in commercial solar investment and installation volumes breaking records across every sector — the industry has attracted exactly the kind of opportunistic actors that fast-growing markets always attract. Contractors with inadequate training. Sales organizations built on pressure and inflated projections. Companies that exist long enough to collect a deposit and commission an installation, then dissolve before Year 3 warranty claims arrive.

When one company cuts corners, every company in the industry pays the price. We have heard it directly from business owners considering solar: “We want to do this, but we’ve heard too many horror stories.” That hesitation — rooted in real experiences by real businesses who trusted the wrong provider — is the industry’s most significant self-inflicted wound.

At Power Solar, we take that personally. Not just because bad actors hurt our reputation by association. Because bad solar installations hurt the businesses that trusted someone with a genuine long-term investment. And because the solar industry’s ability to fulfill its promise — genuinely transforming how businesses manage energy, cost, and risk — depends on buyers being able to trust the companies selling it.

This is our public statement on what’s wrong, what we refuse to do, and what we hold ourselves accountable to.

What Bad Actors Are Actually Doing to the Market

The solar industry’s integrity problems are not new, but they have become more consequential as system sizes have grown, financing structures have become more complex, and the gap between a well-executed installation and a poorly executed one has widened.

Here is what we see happening — and what business owners deserve to understand before they sign anything.

“Zero utility bill” promises that misrepresent how solar works. Net metering policies vary by utility and jurisdiction, and they are not static — they change through regulatory proceedings that can reduce or eliminate the credit rate for exported solar power. A contractor who promises that your utility bill will go to zero is either misinformed about your utility’s actual net metering terms or is deliberately overstating the outcome to close a sale. Solar reduces your utility bill substantially — in many cases by 40–60% — but it does not typically eliminate it, and any contractor telling you otherwise is not giving you an honest picture.

Hidden financing fees that inflate total project cost by 20–40%. The solar financing market includes loan products that advertise low interest rates while embedding substantial “dealer fees” paid to the contractor by the lender. These fees — which can add 20–40% to the effective total cost of the system — are sometimes not disclosed clearly in the proposal and are not visible in the monthly payment because they are rolled into the loan principal. A customer who accepts a “low monthly payment” solar loan without understanding the total cost of the financed system may be paying far more than they realize for a system they could have purchased outright or financed differently at significantly lower total cost.

Contractors who vanish after installation. The solar industry has a company failure rate that is uncomfortably high relative to the 25-year asset life of the systems being installed. Some contractors close due to genuine market pressures — they are not bad actors, just undercapitalized businesses that could not weather a slow quarter. Others close deliberately, having collected deposits and commissions on systems that are now unmonitored, unwarranted, and unsupported. The business owner is left with equipment on their roof, a disconnected phone number, and warranty documentation that is legally unenforceable against a dissolved entity.

Unpermitted installations and substandard workmanship. Cutting corners on permitting — skipping the building permit and electrical inspection that a proper commercial installation requires — is not a minor procedural shortcut. Unpermitted installations can void the building’s insurance coverage for solar-related damage, create liability issues at property sale, and leave safety hazards undetected that a proper inspection would have caught. Substandard workmanship — improper roof penetrations, undersized wiring, inadequate grounding — creates problems that emerge over years, not immediately.

Aggressive sales tactics that exploit urgency. Artificial incentive deadlines, high-pressure close tactics, and sales commissions structures that reward speed over fit have produced a category of solar sale where the customer commits before they have had time to evaluate alternatives, review the contract carefully, or consult their accountant. The business that signs a 20-year PPA under sales pressure because “the incentive expires Friday” may discover months later that the escalator clause will result in them paying more for solar than grid power in Year 18 — a fact that was in the contract they were pressured not to read.

What We Refuse to Do

We are not going to tell you that every other solar company is dishonest. Many are not. The commercial solar industry has a substantial number of reputable, professionally operated companies doing good work for their customers.

But we are going to be explicit about the specific practices we refuse to engage in — because we think transparency about standards is more meaningful than generic claims about integrity.

We will not project savings we cannot support with documented assumptions. Every financial projection we provide is built from your actual utility bills, your specific site conditions, the actual equipment specifications in the proposal, and your utility’s current rate structure. We provide the assumptions in writing. If our projection is more conservative than a competitor’s, that is because we are modeling what we expect to deliver — not what will close the sale.

We will not offer financing without disclosing the total cost. If you are evaluating a solar loan, you will know the total amount financed, the effective interest rate including any dealer fees, and the total amount you will pay over the loan term — before you sign. If we cannot make the economics work with full transparency, we will tell you that too.

We will not install without permits. Permitting is not optional and it is not negotiable. Every installation we complete is properly permitted, inspected, and documented. If a jurisdiction’s permitting process adds time to the project schedule, we manage that timeline — we do not skip the step.

We will not use high-pressure closing tactics. Solar is a long-term decision that deserves deliberate evaluation. We encourage every prospective customer to get competing proposals, review the contract with their attorney, and take the time they need to make an informed decision. A customer who chooses us after thorough evaluation is a better long-term relationship than one who was pressured into signing before they were ready.

We will not partner with sales organizations that do not meet our standards. We work with sales partners in some markets, and every partner we work with is vetted for licensing, insurance, ethical sales practices, and quality of customer communication. A partnership that does not meet our standards does not continue — regardless of the revenue it represents.

What We Hold Ourselves Accountable To

Standards without accountability are marketing. Here is how we hold ourselves accountable:

Insurance-backed workmanship warranties. The workmanship warranty we provide on every installation is backed by a third-party insurance policy — meaning it is enforceable regardless of what happens to our business. We do not ask our customers to take a credit risk on our long-term survival. The warranty protection exists independent of us.

Verified production modeling. We use third-party solar production modeling software — not spreadsheets built on assumptions favorable to the sale — to generate our energy yield projections. The modeling inputs are documented and provided with every proposal.

Transparent proposal documentation. Every proposal we provide includes: itemized equipment with manufacturer and model for every major component; documented generation projections with stated assumptions; a financial model that shows the ITC and depreciation calculations explicitly, including the basis adjustment; O&M service terms; and warranty documentation for every covered component.

References available immediately. We maintain a list of commercial customers who have agreed to speak with prospective buyers about their experience — with us, with the installation process, and with the system’s performance over time. We provide these references in the first conversation, not as a closing tactic after you have already committed.

Performance guarantees with meaningful remedies. The performance guarantees we include in our contracts specify a minimum annual generation output and a remedy that compensates customers at a rate approximating the actual cost of the underperformed generation — not a nominal credit that does not make the customer whole.

A Message to the Industry

We are aware that a thought leadership piece about industry ethics is easy to write and difficult to verify. Anyone can publish a blog post saying they hold themselves to a higher standard.

We invite scrutiny. Ask us the hard questions — about our financial stability, about our warranty insurance provider, about our past customers’ experiences, about the specific assumptions behind any financial projection we provide. We are not asking for trust we have not earned. We are asking for the opportunity to earn it through transparency.

The solar industry’s future belongs to companies that operate as though every customer will read this article and then test every claim against reality. Because increasingly, they will.

When businesses can trust solar companies, more businesses go solar. When more businesses go solar, the industry’s potential to transform commercial energy — reducing costs, building resilience, accelerating decarbonization — is realized. That is the outcome we are working toward. Not just for Power Solar, but for an industry that deserves to be trusted.

What Business Owners Should Take Away

If you are evaluating solar and wondering how to distinguish trustworthy companies from those that are not, the simplest answer is this: test their transparency.

Ask for the assumptions behind their financial projections. Ask who backs the warranty if the company closes. Ask for references who have been customers for at least two years. Ask to review the contract with your attorney before signing. Ask what happens to the PPA rate in Year 15 and Year 20.

A trustworthy company welcomes these questions. A company that does not is telling you everything you need to know.

Solar is a genuine opportunity — one of the most compelling capital investments available to businesses in 2026. It deserves a sales process and an industry that match the quality of the underlying opportunity.

We are committed to being that kind of company. And we believe the industry can be that kind of industry.