By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
What Happened: Oregon solar installers are rallying around the their state’s Legend Solar customers, who could have faced an uncertain future after Utah-based Legend tumbled into financial freefall.
- Among the companies and organizations coming to the rescue are the Energy Trust of Oregon, the Oregon Solar Energy Industries Association and Elemental Energy.
- The state’s installers have rushed in to make sure the entire solar industry doesn’t get a black eye from this high-profile bankruptcy.
SolarWakeup’s View: When one solar company stumbles, it’s up to the rest of us to make sure it doesn’t take the rest of the industry down with it.
And so it has come to pass that Oregon solar installers have sprung into action to keep Legend Solar’s customers from falling through the cracks as the Utah-based installer started struggling financially, so severely in fact that its executives actually wrote a blog post entitled “Extreme Cashflow Problems,” according to the Salt Lake Tribune.
Legend Solar is currently doing business in three states: Utah, Nevada and Oregon. It was listed No. 167 on Solar Power World’s Top 500 Contractors List in 2017 and was the sixth largest contractor in Utah according to the same survey.
None of which matters, of course, if you’re a customer in Oregon, Nevada or Legend’s home state of Utah if you’d taken out loans to get solar installed and are now in danger of having the whole enterprise go belly up. That’s why the Oregon solar installers have leapt into the breach to make these Legend customers whole.
I’d write more, but Laurel Hamilton of Elemental Energy in Oregon (and, I should note, a protégé of California solar legend Jim Jenal), said it better than I ever could:
My company has stepped up to fulfill the orders left in the lurch by the out-of-state solar company [that] went bankrupt. We are doing this at a loss because we believe in supporting the solar industry in Oregon and in making sure people still get their systems as promised.
My team is working overtime every single day to get these systems in by the deadline to get clients their tax credit [Editor’s Note: The deadline is April 1]. Once they do, they’ll have beautiful solar systems providing their homes with 100% clean renewable energy from the sun for more than 25 years. So we’re exhausted but it’s worth it. This is what working in solar and working for a positive company, doing this for the right reasons, is all about. We don’t want the news to scare people into not trusting solar contractors.
Thank you, Laurel, for all that you and your fellow Oregon solar installers are doing to make sure as few customers as possible will be harmed by Legend’s financial tragedy. You and your team – and all the others that are helping – are what the solar industry is all about. Thank you.
EDITED: Laurel has asked me to also thank Oregon installer A&R Solar for also honoring Legend’s contracts. She also wanted to give a shoutout to SunPower and Platt Electric, both of whom are supporting Elemental and A&R’s efforts to make sure Legend’s clients aren’t left without the solar arrays for which they contracted.
More:
Part 2: Industry Steps In To Help Legend Solar Customers