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Theodore Tanczuk, of solar installer YellowLite, puts a panel on a roof of a home in Lakewood, Ohio, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo\/Sue Ogrocki)<\/p>\n
Sue Ogrocki\/AP<\/p>\n
In my previous Watchdog column, I documented how unscrupulous solar sales operators\u00a0exploited<\/a> some of Texas\u2019s most vulnerable residents.<\/p>\n Their victims included a blind woman, a double amputee, a terminally ill hospice patient, and an illiterate homeowner.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The tactics<\/a> were as troubling as the targets: forged signatures, deceptive contracts, and promises that were never intended to be kept.<\/p>\n How did a technology as promising as rooftop solar panels become associated, so quickly, with such abuse?<\/p>\n As William Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest, \u201cHell is empty and all the devils are here.\u201d<\/p>\n Solar scams<\/p>\n In just a few years, complaints about the rooftop solar industry have lit up. There\u2019s a lot of bad news for victims who answered their front door and met lying salespeople in search of commissions.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Make Dallas News a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Texas government faced a fork in the road. Would it allow the scams to proliferate? Remember, Texas doesn\u2019t like regulations. Or would it demand accountability?\u00a0<\/p>\n Before I share the answer, which is surprising, I want to share some basic hard facts you should know about this industry. Thanks to the Texas Elder Justice Coalition<\/a> and Ann\u00a0Baddour of pro-consumer Texas Appleseed<\/a> and Stephanie Mace of AARP<\/a> for the refresher course.<\/p>\n Basic solar facts<\/p>\n There are the salespeople, the installers and the loan company, usually different companies. When something goes wrong,\u00a0Baddour says, \u201cEverybody is pointing figures at the other. It\u2019s hard to find out in the end who is the responsible party for some of the problems we\u2019ve been seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The biggest lie in the business: \u201cYou will have no monthly electricity bill, and this system will pay for itself.\u201d<\/p>\n If you know, by chance, someone who installed panels on their roof and has had no problems and the economics make sense, then good for them. Consider it a miracle.<\/p>\n The bad players have no conscience. I heard one story about a 90-year-old woman who signed a 25-year loan. I wonder how the salespeople sleep at night.<\/p>\n Although the complaint level<\/a> is growing at a tremendous rate, not everyone who falls victim files a complaint.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Sometimes, victim advocates notice a cluster of complaints<\/a> in one neighborhood.\u00a0Baddour explains: \u201cThey descend on neighborhoods, leaving a concentration of complaints.\u201d<\/p>\n If you\u2019re interested, the deadline to submit public comments to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation\u2019s new sales rules is a few days away on April 12. You can tell your story to the rules\u2019 writers. And there\u2019s your hint.<\/p>\n New state law<\/p>\n I promised word of which road Texas takes to combat solar fraud. It\u2019s a rarity when I get to share this, but a new state law (Senate Bill 1036)<\/a> authored\u00a0by state Sen. Judith Zaffirini<\/a> (D-Laredo) is one of the strictest regulatory laws to come out of the Texas Legislature in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Under the new Residential Solar Retailer Regulatory Act, all those connected to the industry must register with the licensing agency, starting on Sept. 1. Criminal background checks and annual training courses are required.<\/p>\n Contracts will be standardized with clear, plain language. Contracts must disclose costs, financing, and estimated energy savings. Penalties can hit $10,000 per violation, and offenses against seniors and vulnerable consumers can leap up to $100,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n Finally, big penalties for spreading misinformation will now hang over the industry\u2019s head. If a company goes bankrupt, it must pass along the lifetime warranty to another company.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use<\/a> and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s some new law. And as an aside, shouldn\u2019t home builders, renovators, and roofers in Texas be held to the same standard?<\/p>\n Now, real consequences are finally on the table. Companies that spread misinformation will face serious penalties. And if a business folds, it won\u2019t get to walk away from its promises \u2014 lifetime warranties must be honored by another provider.<\/p>\n At the outset of this column, I invoked Shakespeare on hell. Here\u2019s a more Texas way to put it: the solar industry didn\u2019t just flirt with trouble \u2014 it signed a deal with the devil, and called it business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Theodore Tanczuk, of solar installer YellowLite, puts a panel on a roof of a home in Lakewood, Ohio,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-232254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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