How to Get Out of a Solar Lease

You do not own the panels, and that decides everything

The salesperson may have called it going solar. What you signed is a long rental of somebody else’s hardware, bolted to your roof, with a monthly fee that in many contracts rises every year. Treasury says the consequence out loud: you do not own the system, and for that reason you generally cannot claim government incentives such as federal or state tax credits. Those go to the owner.

That single fact rules out the exits people assume they have. You cannot sell the panels, because they belong to the company. You cannot refinance them, because there is no loan in your name. What you have is a long contract written by the company that profits from it, and even that contract has exits in it.

The CFPB puts a typical lease at 15 to 20 years with no down payment. Treasury says these contracts often last 20 years or more. Either way the obligation is built to outlast the salesperson who sold it, and possibly the company itself.

The leasing company would prefer you go straight to the buyout, because that is where it sets the price. Work the routes below in order instead. The first four cost nothing.

1. Cancel inside the window

Cost: nothing.

If you signed recently, stop reading and send the notice before the installer gets any further. Treasury tells lease signers directly that the right to cancel the transaction lasts for at least three days from the date it is signed. Underneath that sits 16 CFR 429.1, which lets a buyer cancel until midnight of the third business day after a sale of consumer goods or services for $25 or more that the seller solicited somewhere other than their own place of business. A kitchen table clears that bar.

Your contract may give you longer. Many agreements allow a no-cost exit until a project milestone such as permit submission. Read the cancellation clause before you accept that the federal three days is all you had. Full detail on the cancellation page, including how to send a notice that sticks.

2. Non-performance and broken promises

Cost: nothing to start.

A lease is a bargain: they keep the system running, you pay the fee. If their side has failed, you have a claim, and you should make it yourself before anyone charges you to make it for you.

Treasury tells lease signers to ask, before signing, whether the contract includes a performance guaranty and how the company will pay if the system does not produce the minimum amount of power, and what recourse they have to cease payment if the system is not repaired or replaced in a timely manner. Those are the clauses to go find now, because they are the promises the company has to keep.

This is not hypothetical. Connecticut’s attorney general reached a $100,000 settlement with Spruce Power 3, LLC in March 2026 over billing, customer service and warranty issues, and disclosed a civil investigative demand to SunStrong after his office and the Department of Consumer Protection jointly received roughly 65 complaints about failure to uphold warranties, unresponsiveness, and a $10 monthly fee to receive data about the system’s own production. A fee to see what your own roof produced, as those complaints describe it, shows how little some servicers think they owe the people they bill.

Write to whoever bills you. Describe the failure, give the dates, and name the clause it breaks. Keep a copy, because the company will keep its own records and you need yours.

3. Complain, for free, to people with subpoena power

Cost: nothing.

Treasury’s advisory routes solar consumers to the FTC, the CFPB, and their state consumer protection office. Those offices take it seriously. Every significant case in this industry grew out of complaint volume, including the Connecticut investigation above.

A complaint costs a stamp and twenty minutes. Solar cancellation companies advertise to lease holders offering to handle this for a fee. They are the second wave of the same industry, and nobody needs to be paid to file a form you can fill in tonight.

4. Transfer at sale

Cost: whatever it adds to your closing.

This is the exit most lease holders actually use. It hands the contract to someone else, and only if the lessor approves them: the buyer has to qualify and assume the agreement, as a term of your contract. Treasury tells lease signers to ask, before signing, what happens if they want to leave the contract or sell the house, and whether a penalty like an early termination fee applies.

If you are selling anyway, start that conversation with the lessor months before closing. A lessor that drags its feet the week of closing has you over a barrel. The mechanics are on the selling page.

5. The buyout

Cost: real money, set by your contract.

Now the free routes are behind you, and the leasing company gets to name its number. Every lease carries a buyout provision, and it is the contract’s own answer to the question you are asking. There is no statute setting the price.

Two pieces of Treasury language matter here. The first is that lease signers should ask about exit fees and early termination fees, and whether the fees change or increase over time. The second is the end-of-term clause: Treasury warns that at the end of the lease you do not automatically own the system, and tells signers to understand whether they are required to purchase it from the company at “fair market value.”

That phrase does real work. Fair market value is not a published number. When the lessor both sets the figure and is the only realistic buyer of a system already bolted to your roof, the price you are quoted is a negotiating position rather than an appraisal. Get it in writing, ask how it was calculated, and compare it against simply finishing the term. The arithmetic is on the buyout page, and our cost calculator runs the comparison.

One more contract detail worth knowing before you buy anything out: the CFPB notes that at the end of a lease, the lessor is responsible for uninstalling and removing the panels. If your contract says that, walking away at the end of the term is a real option and the buyout is competing against it.

6. Stop paying

Cost: your credit, and more.

It is a real route and the last one. The leasing company is built to collect for twenty years, and the consequences deserve their own page. Read what actually happens before you choose it, not after.

The escalator is the clause to find tonight

If you read one line of your lease this week, make it the payment schedule, because that is the clause built to make the company more money every year you stay.

The CFPB found that while some leases hold the monthly payment flat for the whole term, in many cases the payment increases each year by a predetermined amount. Treasury says your contract might allow your monthly payment to increase over time. Neither says what your escalator is, because only your contract does.

Find the percentage. Then do the arithmetic yourself across the years you have left. That total is what every exit on this page is measured against, and it is usually far larger than this month’s bill suggests. Treasury’s test for whether a lease is saving you anything is one the salesperson rarely runs for you: if the company is promising electric bill savings, the combined total of your new electricity bill plus your monthly lease payment should be lower than your current electricity bill. Run that check with the escalated payment, not today’s.

This is general information, not legal advice. Every route here turns on the exact words in your lease and on your state’s law, so before you send a notice, accept a buyout quote, or miss a payment, put the contract itself in front of an attorney licensed in your state.