Owning a solar or solar and storage system offers numerous benefits to homeowners, including control over rising energy costs, independence, protection against grid disruption events, and increased home value.
Unfortunately, many in the solar industry have adopted an incorrect mindset when it comes to setting expectations for solar maintenance. It’s common to hear sales reps claim that solar is “set it and forget it” or that “solar has no moving parts”. As anyone who has had solar will tell you, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Being a piece of electronic equipment that remains in a home or business for 25+ years means that solar maintenance will eventually be necessary for the equipment’s lifespan.
If you’re a homeowner who currently has solar or is looking to install solar in the near future, you’ve probably asked the question, What maintenance goes into this? We looked at data from 50,000 solar projects between 2023 and 2025 to give you a realistic idea of what long-term solar maintenance costs really look like.
Table of Contents
What’s Failing and How Often
Solar energy systems are made up of several pieces of equipment, but solar maintenance is largely concentrated in two pieces: solar panels (modules) and inverters.
It’s important for homeowners to note, though, that their solar arrays also have wiring, racking, communication equipment, and more that could require service at some point. In particular, a growing issue has been challenges with internet connection devices. Envoys, wifi connection kits, and cellular connection kits have been failing and causing replacement costs for homeowners.
When it comes to equipment failures, products typically follow a “bathtub curve”. The concept of a bathtub curve illustrates the changing failure rate of equipment over time. Failure rates are higher early in equipment lifetime, drop low during middle life operation, and increase toward the end of life from wear out. Solar panels are also subject to degradation, typically between 0.25%-0.5% per year, leading to failure claims if the power output drops below the threshold.
Of the two main types of solar equipment, inverters account for the majority of failure claims. A 2017 study from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) looked at median panel failure rates from 2000 – 2015. That study noted a failure rate of 0.05%.
A study we conducted here at Solar Insure showed string inverters with a failure rate of 0.89%, and microinverters failing at a rate of 0.0551%. So while in all these studies the failure rates on equipment is low for the time period being measured, as the bathtub curve notes, systems are likely to have failures at some point in their life. With a product designed for 25-year use, homeowners should expect to need solar maintenance a few times in their project’s lifetime.
What About Manufacturer Warranties?
The first question most homeowners ask is, “Wait, aren’t I covered from failures by the equipment manufacturer’s warranty?” It’s a valid question, but one that is often misunderstood.
The majority of equipment manufacturer warranties cover just the equipment, not labor costs. While a homeowner can easily get a new piece of equipment, they would still need to pay an installer or electrician to come out and make the swap. The labor costs are often a surprise to homeowners. The surprise often leads to frustration from homeowners, or solar companies eating the cost of that maintenance and negatively affecting their bottom line.
Solar Panel Maintenance Costs
Through our work with hundreds of installers and analyzing thousands of systems through our proprietary monitoring and claims-filing platform, Daybreak, we were able to analyze over 50,000 solar energy systems and their solar maintenance requirements.
When it comes to panels, our data found that approximately 0.45% of projects made a claim for panel maintenance or repair. From those claims, the average labor cost was approximately $650.
In some cases, diagnostics were required to ascertain the exact issue with a panel, meaning some sites required multiple visits to resolve an issue. This means that if a homeowner has a covered issue with one of their solar panels, they’re likely to be looking at spending $650-$1,200 to have that issue resolved.
Our data also found that the average time from installation to claim was about a year and a half.
Notably, panels on average cost more to repair because of the labor time required. Since the majority of residential systems have panels on a roof, performing solar maintenance requires workers to climb onto the roof to remove and replace one or multiple panels.
Inverter Maintenance Costs
As we noted above, inverters had a higher failure rate compared to panels. This makes sense when you consider that inverters are really doing the heavy lifting in a solar array, converting energy from DC to AC and interfacing with electric grids and homes.
When it comes to string inverters, our research showed an average labor cost of $483 per failure. The average time from installation to first claim was just over a year and a half.
For microinverters, the average labor cost was $482, and the average time from installation to claim was about a year and a half.
The data in this and other studies suggests that homeowners who have an inverter fail can budget to spend $480-1000 to resolve the issue and have their inverter replaced. On top of the cost to remedy defective equipment, homeowners are also losing out on energy savings from their system being down. In some cases, issues can be remedied quickly, but in others, a system could be down for a few weeks.
What to Do if Your Solar Installer is Out of Business?
Solar Maintenance can be a headache when it eventually comes, but the issues are amplified if your original solar installer has gone out of business. Unfortunately, in recent years, many large installers and solar businesses have gone under. While there are some installers who will take on orphaned systems, many avoid these systems because they don’t want to handle preexisting conditions.
Solar homeowners who received an SI-30 warranty from a Solar Insure Certified Provider at the time of their installation are protected against labor costs for covered repairs, giving them the peace of mind they deserve when going solar.
For homeowners without a solar installer, SolarDetect can step in to provide reliable support. SolarDetect is a service built specifically for homeowners whose original solar installer is no longer available.
Created by Solar Insure and backed by Zurich North America, an A+ rated global insurer, SolarDetect offers reliable post-installation protection through two integrated services:
- SolarDetect Health Check – A one-time remote system analysis to evaluate your solar performance and identify any issues.
- SolarDetect Coverage – A monthly extended service agreement that includes monthly performance reports, remote diagnostics, and dispatch coordination when repairs are needed.
Our mission is to restore confidence in your solar investment and ensure your system operates at peak performance, without requiring support from your original installer. Learn more and see if you qualify for SolarDetect coverage at https://detect.solarinsure.com/
Follow Solar Insure on our social media channels for all the information you could ever need about solar. Stay up to date with the latest in solar tips, trends, SI-30 product notes, and pro tips for success in your solar business.
Top 5 Silent Profit Killers for a Solar Company
It’s rarely the big, obvious mistakes that drag a solar company and a team down. It’s the things that get pushed aside with a “that’s...Continue reading→
Culture That Connects: Rethinking How We Attract and Keep Talent in the Renewable Energy Industry
In the solar industry, talent and trust are inseparable. The next generation of solar professionals, especially Gen Z, care deeply about where they work, how...Continue reading→
Solar and Recruitment: Why Younger Talent Chooses Sustainable Employers
I am an elder millennial. Looking back, my career began in a very different workplace than the one that exists today. Back then, culture usually...Continue reading→
