Harsh lessons from solar panel saga

Putting solar panels on your roof feels like a no-brainer. You cut your power bill, and with a subscription model, you don't even pay upfront. So what went wrong for so many households?

The answer is SolarZero.

When SolarZero went into liquidation in November 2024, it was New Zealand's largest solar provider, with around 40% of the market. Its roughly 15,000 customers remain tied to 20-year leases, now serviced by SZ Servicing. Some say they have lost guaranteed pricing, seen bills jump and been quoted thousands of dollars to leave. Others say selling a home with the lease attached is difficult.

The SolarZero fiasco raises several issues, but one term in its customer contracts is particularly problematic: when a SolarZero customer moves their system to a new home, their 20-year term restarts from zero. The panels might be 10 years old, but the clock resets, so the customer pays for a further two decades. As people move house far more often than every 20 years, moving is an entirely predictable event, not a rare one. 

Under the Fair Trading Act 1986, a court can declare a term in a standard-form consumer contract as unfair if it creates a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations, is not reasonably necessary to protect the supplier's legitimate interests, and would cause the consumer detriment. A restart-on-move clause arguably meets all three.

The imbalance is clear: the customer bears the cost of an ordinary life event, while the company gains a fresh 20 years of revenue from the same hardware. These are take-it-or-leave-it contracts, so there was no room to negotiate. A company may recover its equipment costs and earn a reasonable return, but resetting the term goes well beyond that.

The detriment is higher total payments and a strong deterrent to selling your home. Customers who signed up believed they were locking in savings, not signing away their freedom to move.

The act also provides examples of the kinds of terms that may be unfair, including a term that has the effect of allowing one party, but not the other, to renew a contract. A clause that restarts a 20-year term when a customer moves has just that effect.

The Commerce Commission opened a preliminary investigation into SolarZero and SZ Servicing over possible Fair Trading Act breaches and, by late 2025, had received 162 complaints.

That is encouraging, but customers are still waiting.

The commission should say publicly whether the term allowing SolarZero to restart the clock when a customer moves their solar system to a new home is within scope and, if it considers the term unfair, go to the district court and ask for a declaration. Every month of delay is another month of payments under terms that may be unlawful.

Where to complain

If you have a problem with your solar company and cannot resolve it directly with the company, complain to Utilities Disputes, a free, independent company. Give them a chance to fix the problem first, and keep records of everything.

Utilities Disputes is seeing the fallout from SolarZero. In the year to 31 March 2026, SolarZero accounted for 20.8 percent of the deadlocked complaints it accepted, despite having 0.5 percent of the electricity market.

But there is a gap. Utilities Disputes cannot deal with disputes where someone bought their system outright. A household that paid tens of thousands of dollars upfront gets less protection than one on a lease. Their options are the Disputes Tribunal or the courts, which are slower, harder and more expensive.

Underneath it all is a simple problem: New Zealand has no solar-specific standards for solar system sellers.

Australia has a better system. Installers there must be accredited under a scheme approved by the Clean Energy Regulator, now run by Solar Accreditation Australia. Retailers can join the voluntary New Energy Tech Consumer Code, which sets standards above the minimum in consumer law.

But our cousins across the ditch are not perfect. One retailer, expelled from the code in December 2025, reportedly kept trading and is under investigation in several states, although none of the allegations has been tested in court.

The lesson is to emulate Australia’s approach but make the core parts mandatory: accredited installers, approved products, clear disclosure of long-term costs, and a dispute scheme covering all solar purchases. Disclosure is vital for subscriptions: customers should be told, in plain language, what happens if they move, sell, or the company fails.

Solar is good for households and the country, but people will only keep investing if they trust the market. The Commerce Commission should finish what it started, widen Utilities Disputes' reach, and the government should set proper standards for a rapidly growing industry.