What happened to American Solar Direct?

American Solar Direct was one of Southern California's busiest residential installers — an Anaheim-based company founded in 2009 that opened its San Diego office on Scripps Summit Court in 2012 and sold from Oceanside to the border. On June 2, 2017, it filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy and shut down abruptly, without notifying its customers. There was no reorganization and no successor installer — the company simply liquidated, listing tens of millions in liabilities against almost no assets.

That was nearly a decade ago, which means every American Solar Direct system in San Diego is now 9 to 16 years old — deep into the age where string inverters fail and roof penetrations show their workmanship.

If you lease: your payments didn't die with the company

Most ASD customers signed 20-year leases. Here's the part almost nobody explained: those leased systems were never owned by American Solar Direct itself — they sat in a separately financed fund, which survived the bankruptcy and has changed hands through a chain of energy investors over the years. Today, lease customers commonly deal with a servicing company (many report Omnidian handling monitoring and maintenance contact) and keep making monthly payments on systems the original installer abandoned.

If you're selling or refinancing, watch for old UCC-1 fixture filings tied to the lease — getting them addressed takes lead time, and homeowners have reported real headaches there. Keep every statement, and get the current servicer's obligations in writing.

If you own your system — cash, or a loan you've been paying — the workmanship warranty died in the liquidation, and nobody is obligated to maintain it. That's fixable.

What we do for ASD-era systems

• A $399 solar system and roof inspection report — credited toward your job — production audit, wiring and connector inspection, and a hard look at 10-plus-year-old roof penetrations, with findings in writing.
• Diagnostics and repair under an active C-10 electrical license — ASD-era systems commonly run SolarEdge or SMA string inverters, and inverters of that generation are reaching end of life. Where manufacturer warranties still apply, we handle the claim legwork — in many cases we can replace failed equipment at no cost to you under the manufacturer's warranty. Our inspection report tells us whether you qualify.
• Inverter replacement and modernization — when a 2013 string inverter dies, we'll give you the straight comparison between like-for-like replacement and modernizing.
• Monitoring restoration — many ASD systems have been flying blind since 2017.
• Detach-and-reset for reroofs — roofs and arrays age together; one crew, one license set, one written warranty.

Estimates are always free. One company — B, C-10, and C-39 — CSLB #1130793. Call (858) 541-1097.

Different installer?

See our guides for Sullivan Solar Power, Titan Solar Power, SolarCity (now Tesla), and our full orphaned-system guide.