In this episode, John Maher and Brian Sadler, Vice President of Solaris Renewables, discuss the effects of SunPower’s bankruptcy on existing warranties and the solar industry as a whole. Brian explains the split between SunPower and Maxeon, highlighting how Maxeon and other manufacturers are fulfilling warranty obligations despite SunPower’s challenges. They address customer concerns about delays in warranty claims and provide advice on how SunPower customers can gather system information to ensure smooth warranty processes. The conversation concludes with reflections on the long-term implications of SunPower’s bankruptcy, emphasizing the importance of working with reliable local installers to maintain confidence in solar solutions.
John Maher: Hi, I am John Maher and I’m here today with Brian Sadler, Vice President at Solaris Renewables, a solar company in Massachusetts providing premium solar and storage technologies with exceptional customer service and to designing, installing, and servicing solar systems in Massachusetts, Southern New Hampshire and Maine. Today, we’re talking about the SunPower bankruptcy and potential warranty issues. Welcome, Brian.
Brian Sadler: Hi, John. Thanks for having me on today.
How Does SunPower’s Bankruptcy Impact their Warranty?
Maher: Sure. Yeah. So Brian, we just have learned somewhat recently about SunPower, one of the most popular solar companies out there going bankrupt and filing for bankruptcy. How does that filing impact the validity and the coverage of existing SunPower warranties?
Sadler: Yeah, well, it’s been tough news. So, us as a former SunPower Elite dealer for many years and having hundreds and hundreds of customers that have SunPower products including myself and other of our employees and friends and family as well as a lot of customers, it’s been hard. And for our industry, it’s also hard as well because it was a great story of a American company, American based, and they source a lot of products in the most responsible ways and had the best environmental records. So, for our industry it’s a blow as well because it was a good story.
But SunPower was, I would say, a couple things they’re notoriously challenging to work with. And then they had a split, and it hasn’t gone well for them in recent years, which is too bad and resulted in finally the filing chapter 11 bankruptcy. But the good news is that their split was basically their SunPower keeping the brand and becoming the sales and support arm of the business, and then Maxeon as the manufacturer.
And fortunately, they also had electronic partnerships that even though they branded SunPower, it was made by another manufacturer. So fortunately all those manufacturers had stepped up and are living up to their part of the warranty. So there’s a soft landing, but when the news first happened, it was chaos and this is bad news and everyone was sad and frustrated and what does this mean? And that’s we’ve been kind of sifting through and trying to sort out and message our customers of getting bad news, but here’s the good news is that there is some warranty coverage still in place.
Current Status of SunPower Warranty Claims
Maher: So, talk a little bit more about that and what the current status of Sun Powers Warranty claims process is. Are there going to be any delays or disruptions to that? And if you do need to get your SunPower solar panels replaced, if there’s something wrong with them, who’s handling that?
Sadler: Yeah, a great question. So we have historically serviced all of our… not only SunPower, but all of our customer warranties on their behalf. And we’re continuing to try to do that through these channels of support. But some part it was… again, it was chaotic, the dust has settled a little bit and there’s more information there. They’ve put on their website now, kind of a frequently asked questions, a warranty claims, and then a little bit of the story like what’s happened and then broken out by what product do you have and who is covering it. And so we have been able to do some warranty claims on behalf of our customers.
Some customers, rightly so, have been frustrated about the process and the delays. They were already in a warranty claim with SunPower that we had filed. It was taking a long time. Looking back, were they slow playing it? I’m not sure. I’m not sure exactly what the MO was, but at the end of the day it was taking longer than it normally does.
And now we essentially need to refile or redirect that claim and try to get it going. But I would say depending on the product, it could take a little bit longer, but at least there’s something there. I’d say the panels are, generally speaking, the least point of failure on any solar system and SunPower now made by Maxeon is the most robust panel in the market and has been for the last 40 years.
So, the chance of the panel failing is it’s one in 15,000 or 50 per million, though it’s low. The electronics is typically the weakest points of a solar system, and they used a couple different inverter manufacturers and then a micro inverter… a couple different micro inverter manufacturers, and some of those have consolidated.
So, it does make it a little bit easier that we have less points of contact to get this group of inverters, this group of micro inverters, things like that replaced. So we’ve been working through it on behalf of our customers. Some customers want to reach out directly and that’s perfectly fine as well. It’s public information at this point. And we do share that for transparency and they’ll let them know, this is what we’re working with and what we’re going on and we’re trying to do our best on your behalf. But generally speaking, there is a path for customers at this time.
Is SunPower Providing Replacement Parts?
Maher: So, is SunPower then continuing to provide replacement parts and maintenance services for systems that are under warranty?
Sadler: It’s actually not SunPower. What they’ve done is, so… Maxeon, and then they also used some third party, some different… actually there were competitors at one time that were starting to produce panels for them. And so, you go directly to the manufacturer on the panels and the electronics as well.
So, SunPower directly is not providing any warranty support maintenance. They’ve deferred to the manufacturer, which they were for the panels at one time, the manufacturer being that they were together with Maxeon and once they split, it became Maxeon as the manufacturer and SunPower as the brand and the sales portion, the sales and support piece.
So, SunPower is basically not providing any warranty support or much communication to be honest, but have put into place accessible manufacturers and there’s a link you can go to for each one and make a warranty claim or work with your installer to make that claim on your behalf and get the service taken care of.
Work With Your Solar Installer For Warranty Claims
Maher: What do you think the best way to go there is to contact your installer and have them kind of work that through?
Sadler: Yeah, because their monitoring platform is still up. So we have visibility over our SunPower systems and I hope that continues, but if it were not, it would require us potentially going out there or at least us relying on the information that we have from the installation process. We know what products and design and so on and so forth, so it can have a better shot of service in the system as well.
There’s usually a history there, so I would say you’re always best to leverage the installer that did SunPower installation first, and there’s been some installers that were more closely tied to SunPower and are no longer as well, which is unfortunate. And we’ve had companies that have come and go over the years, so we have taken on a lot of orphaned systems. So some folks would call SunPower direct some customers, so they no longer have an installer they didn’t know who to turn to. And SunPower has siphoned those customers to us as an option to take on.
What Steps Should SunPower Customers Take?
Maher: Are there any steps that SunPower customers need to take now to sort make sure that their warranty is going to continue to be in place or should they just kind of ride it out?
Sadler: Yeah, good question. First of all, you’re going to know what you have. If you have an installer, you should reach out and say, “What is my inverter?” Because I will say it’s not super clear on the SunPower website of what the buckets are that says this equipment, this equipment, this equipment, but it’s all branded SunPower as far as the customer sees right? So, there’s a little bit more digging in.
So, knowing the model number off your inverter, if it’s a single inverter that should be in your basement, garage, or just on the outside of your house, taking a photograph of that and sharing it with your installer, any information you have from your installation, gathering that together and getting a list of as much information you can on your model numbers is super helpful.
And that’d be something that a lot of times customers that we didn’t install will say, “Hey, do you mind if you take a picture of the stick on the side of the inverter, any information you have about your solar system, and share that with us. It will help us make an informed decision,” and then know where to channel that warranty toward.
Long Term Implications of SunPower’s Bankruptcy
Maher: And then finally, where do you see things going in the future? What are the long-term implications of this SunPower bankruptcy?
Sadler: I mean, in my opinion, the biggest thing is just the unfortunate look for the industry that a model US company is no longer. So, I think that it’s unfortunate that it a little bit undermines the confidence in the industry and the comfort of customers moving forward. So, that’s why I always tell customers that I would recommend speaking with the local installers when you’re shopping for solar, the big nationals and regional installers are less apt to care about the equipment and the customer experience and the local installer’s a little bit more in the weeds about equipment, customer experience, knowing kind of what the finger on the pulse of the industry as well.
And I hope that it doesn’t, and I hope we come back even stronger. I mean, there’s a lot of great products and services out there in our industry and our industry has really been an emerging industry for some time now and has been a ton of innovation and I, know, I hope that will continue and I anticipate that it does.
We keep seeing more and more exciting things in our market in the industry all the time. But I do think that it’s just unfortunate and allows you see some national media coverage around things like this that do undermine the confidence in the industry a bit. And I think some of that’s with the different financing models and there’s a lot, it’s still a newer industry.
For us, we’ve been doing this for 12 years and we’re relative dinosaurs in the industry, but this industry has only been really since the early 2000s as a real national growth industry. And there’s been a ton of change and improvement, consumer protections, financial offerings, product offerings, and the law development, which has been super positive.
And this is an unfortunate part of that story. There’s been a lot of big companies that have tried to merge or buy each other out and it hasn’t gone well. But in this case, it’s unfortunate and we all learn from it and just get better.
Information About Solaris Renewables
Maher: All right, well that’s all the really great information, Brian. Thanks again for speaking with me today.
Sadler: Thanks a lot, John. I appreciate it.
Maher: And for more information, you can visit the Solaris Renewables website at solarisrenewables.com or call (781) 270-6555.