Skyline Solar sounds like the kind of company Luke Skywalker might start. But the Force wasn’t with this particular company, which went out of business in 2024. And, within a couple years of purchasing solar panels from Skyline Solar around 2020, so as to be more independent, Happy Valley resident Christine Meadowcroft found herself in what she calls a solar panel rabbit hole.
The first indication of the “Alice in Wonderland” trouble ahead was when the tax spiel her solar panel salesman gave turned out to be quite misleading.
Meadowcroft and her husband had been told by their grinning Cheshire cat salesman that their $43,000 solar panel purchase would net them a significant tax refund, somewhere around $12,000. But, when they went to file their taxes, what they found out is that it’s a tax credit, not a refund.
“I think I figured it out one time, and to actually qualify for that tax credit, we would have needed to make like $130,000 a year,” Meadowcroft said. “And we don’t make anywhere near that. I have three toddlers on one income, and we’re living literally, you know, hand-to-mouth.”
In their circumstances, the tax credit was useless.
Worse than that, believing they were getting a tax credit, all their calculations on the cost-benefit of the purchase were obviously wrong.
“The tax credit is only going to help wealthy people,” Meadowcroft said. “So that was the first problem. A salesman giving us a line that didn’t work out for what we thought our finances were going to be.”
Timing Turns Out To Be Everything
The next problem was a timing issue. They had purchased the solar panels for installation in May, since the salesman told them it would probably take about a month to install. But it turned out the logistics are much more difficult than they’d been told. It took until August to get them installed.
That means they completely missed out on the best of the solar season for their first year.
“They told us it would be like a month or something,” Meadowcroft said. “But no, we were wrangling county people, Black Hills people, Skyline Solar people, electricians. They’re coming to your house weekly. And when they don’t come for a couple of weeks, you’re freaking out, wondering what’s going on.”
Because Skyline Solar had proven difficult to get ahold of, Meadowcroft started collecting phone numbers for anyone and everyone who touched the solar project in any way. The guy who dropped off pipes? Got his number. The concrete trucks? Got his number, too.
“One guy dropped off some stuff and we had no idea where he worked,” she said. “Still got his number.”
At one point, Meadowcroft even spotted a Skyline Solar salesman pulling into Walgreens while she was driving by. She dashed into the store after him, so she could get his phone number, too, just in case.
When everything finally came together and the panels went up, it was anticlimactic. Click, click, click, done.
“But getting to that point was insane,” Meadowcroft said. “You would have thought we were building a whole new house. It was that much drama.”
It wasn’t until after the installation that Meadowcroft discovered yet another twist down the solar panel rabbit hole.
“We got our tax bill from the county and looked at it, and we go, ‘What are they taxing us on, because it’s like, quadrupled,’” she said. “So, we called up the county assessor and they go, ‘Well that’s your solar panel.’ We go, ‘That’s not a permanent structure. You can’t tax us on that. Come on, man.’”
Fortunately for Meadowcroft, they hadn’t put the panels on their roof because it was too steep. They could get a better angle, performance-wise, on the ground. If they had put the panels on the roof, they would become part of the property, Meadowcroft learned. But since they were on the ground, she was able to talk the assessor into removing them from the tax bill — after making several pleading phone calls.
Hail Is An Act Of God
When there was a big hailstorm that broke a knob off the back of a panel, Meadowcroft thought surely that would be covered by her warranty.
“It was soft-ball sized hail, and it killed a couple of horses down the road,” she said. “This was serious, serious hail. Those things hit our solar panels and amazingly didn’t break any of them. I was super impressed about that.”
But after she called Skyline Solar to inquire about the knob, she learned that hail damage isn’t covered by her warranty, because it’s an act of God.
Looking more closely at the policy, Meadowcroft realized she couldn’t tell what exactly would be covered by the warranty.
“They don’t list it out,” she said. “So, your warranty is basically worthless.”
After that she started looking into SolarEdge, the company that supplied the panels Skyline Solar installed.
“Nobody works there,” she said. “It’s all digitally run out of Israel. And I think China makes the solar cells and a company in Germany makes the panels.”
Regardless of the chain of manufacture, what Meadowcroft found is that there’s not one person with the company who will pick up a phone to answer questions from a confused customer, just trying to understand what the warranty they have covers. The questions are all handled by a chat bot.
Skyline Out Of Business
Not too long ago, Meadowcroft learned that Skyline Solar, which had installed their panels, had gone out of business.
She didn’t learn about it from the company though. She found out when she got an alert that one of the panels was malfunctioning.
So, she started calling Skyline Solar to find out how to fix the panel, and whether it would be covered by warranty. But there was no answer.
In fact, the message machine was so full, it couldn’t take any more messages.
So, she pulled out the list of phone numbers she’d saved from the 15 or so contractors who’d touched the solar panel at some point during the installation phase. One let her know the company had gone out of business.
That’s when she found out that Skyline Solar had been in a bit of trouble, not long after she and her husband purchased their solar panels.
“You can look up a couple of articles from a couple of years ago where their salesmen were going around, lying and the whole thing,” Meadowcroft said.
In one 2020 article, Rocky Mountain Power warns customers that it’s not affiliated with Skyline Solar, which had been claiming the utility is offering rebates to customers so they can obtain “free” solar panels.
And, while Meadowcroft hadn’t seen any complaints at the Better Business Bureau at the time she purchased her solar panels from Skyline, when she checked again there were more than 30 complaints from various customers who had been burned just like her.
Maintenance Gets You Coming and Going
Eventually, Meadowcroft has been able to find someone to take over the maintenance of her troublesome solar panels.
From him she learned that solar panel instrumentation requires an upgrade about every four years or so. New chips can cost upwards of $1000, about $600 of which is for the chip, and the rest is installation labor.
She’s also discovered that to get the most out of the panel, it would require about $10,000 more in battery storage, along with additional equipment to operate that storage.
“They get you coming and going,” she said.
With 20-20 hindsight, solar panels are not something she recommends without a lot of research and consultation with accountants and other experts.
The panels do work, and they do defray substantial electricity costs, she said. Eventually, she believes the family will even come out ahead at the end of their 25-year lifespan.
But the work and headache it has taken to get there isn’t for the faint of heart, she added, and may be best for those who could handle some of the maintenance themselves, in a pinch.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
