Freedom Forever Chapter 7: Who Services Your Solar System Now

Freedom Forever is in Chapter 7 liquidation, converted from Chapter 11 on August 7, 2026. Warranties on your panels and inverter usually come from the equipment manufacturer and stay with the equipment, so they usually do not depend on Freedom Forever. This guide covers the warranties that usually survive and the ones that may not, your monitoring and your payments, the October 16 claims deadline, and where the court case stands.

For a general explanation of the court processes, read Solar Company Bankruptcy: Chapter 7 vs Chapter 11.

Why your panel and inverter warranties are usually not affected

Your panels and inverters are warrantied by the companies that built them, not by Freedom Forever. Manufacturers like Canadian Solar, Panasonic, Jinko, and Trina typically warrant their panels for 25 years against defects and accelerated degradation. Inverters carry their own coverage: 10 years on most string units and 25 years on Enphase microinverters and SolarEdge power optimizers.

When a piece of equipment fails under warranty, the claim goes directly to the manufacturer, not the installer. Your installation packet contains the warranty documents and the serial numbers needed to file. In most cases you can submit a claim within the warranty term even after Freedom Forever is gone.

This is the central protection homeowners often miss. Panasonic does not care which company screwed the panel down. It cares that the panel is a Panasonic panel still under warranty. The manufacturer relationship runs from the factory to you, so in most cases the bankruptcy does not break that link. The exception is coverage that Freedom Forever itself provided or backed, such as an installer-backed extended warranty. If your installer registered a manufacturer warranty for you, confirm with the manufacturer that it is on file in your name. Check whose name is on each warranty document.

To lock in the protection, register each piece of equipment under your own name and email. Most manufacturers have a homeowner portal where you enter the model and serial number. Doing this now creates a warranty file in your name instead of one tied to Freedom Forever's customer database.

What happens to the workmanship warranty

Workmanship coverage, the warranty Freedom Forever issued on the quality of the installation itself, is the piece the liquidation affects. Workmanship covers things like racking, wiring, roof penetrations and flashing. If the racking is mounted wrong and panels shift, or a roof penetration was sealed poorly and starts leaking, that fell to the installer under its workmanship warranty.

That coverage was Freedom Forever's own promise. In a Chapter 7 liquidation, a promise the company never performed becomes a general unsecured claim against an estate that is being wound down. The company's Chapter 11 sale effort ended without a buyer (Dkt 501), so no company took over that promise through the sale. Treat the workmanship warranty as something you can no longer rely on, and plan on arranging and paying for installation-related repairs yourself unless a third-party warranty administrator or an insurance policy backs your coverage. Your contract and closing paperwork will name one if it exists.

If Freedom Forever owed you a workmanship repair it never performed, that can be part of a proof of claim. The claims section below explains the deadline and the form.

Document the system now while it is working. Pull your installation paperwork, take photos of the array and roof penetrations, and note the date of any inspections you have on record. If a workmanship issue surfaces later, this record is what your next contractor will need, and it supports any insurance or recovery fund claim.

How to set up monitoring under your own login

Monitoring is the second piece of the installer relationship that shifts. Many Freedom Forever customers view production data through Freedom Forever's own app. Installer-controlled monitoring portals do not survive a liquidation reliably. Your panels keep producing kWh either way, but you want visibility into the system through an account in your own name.

If your system uses Enphase microinverters, create an Enphase Enlighten account under your own email and add your system using the serial number from your installation packet. If you have a SolarEdge inverter, do the same on the SolarEdge monitoring platform. Both manufacturers operate monitoring platforms that work independent of any installer. Our sign-in directory lists the address and claim steps for each platform, and our monitoring guide explains what the data means.

If your inverter is from SMA, Fronius, Schneider, or another brand, check the manufacturer's site for a homeowner monitoring option and register there. A small number of older string inverters do not offer direct homeowner monitoring. In that case you lose the dashboard but not the production.

While the Freedom Forever app is still active, export anything you can. Screenshot your production history and any alerts. This data is useful later if you need to demonstrate that your system performed as designed or document a degradation claim against a panel manufacturer.

Should I keep paying, and who do I even pay?

Yes, keep paying. The obligation to pay does not run to the installer that put the panels on your roof. If you financed the system with a solar loan, your payment goes to the lender that funded it, or to whichever company holds or services the loan now. If you signed a lease or power purchase agreement, the system is usually owned by a third-party owner or a finance fund rather than by the installer. Freedom Forever's liquidation does not by itself cancel your contract or your obligation to pay.

Stopping payment is the one move that can genuinely hurt you here. Missing loan or lease payments risks default under your contract and damage to your credit, and it creates a dispute you do not need while the liquidation runs.

Watch your statements for a change of servicer. Keep paying on the schedule you have now, and change where you send money only after a written servicer change notice arrives and you have confirmed it against a phone number or address you already had, never the one printed on the notice itself. Payment-redirection scams follow installer failures like this one. Keep a record of every payment you make. Our guides on what to do when a new company takes over your lease and whether you still owe on your loan go further.

A change of servicer does not change the terms of your contract. If your lease or PPA includes a performance guarantee or an escalator cap, those terms stay with the contract. Keep your signed agreement in the same folder as the rest of your documentation.

What if your installation was left half finished?

Some homeowners signed with Freedom Forever and are waiting on an installation that has not reached final inspection or permission to operate. If that is you, slow down before any more money moves. Contact your financing company in writing and tell them the project is incomplete. Ask them to confirm the status of the loan before any further disbursement. Do not make additional payments toward an unfinished project without that conversation on record.

The financing company may also be the one that finishes the job. The court's conversion order authorized Freedom Forever's solar project financing partners, including Sunrun, EverBright, Project Solar, EnFin, GoodLeap, Credit Human and Participate, to exercise their contract rights without further court permission. That includes step-in rights to complete open installation projects for homeowners and to work with permit offices and utilities on the company's behalf (Dkt 533, August 7, 2026). If one of these companies financed your project, ask it in writing whether it will complete your installation.

Next, call your city or county building department and ask for the status of the open permit on your address. The permit file shows exactly which inspections have passed and which are still outstanding, and it is a public record you can request at any time.

Do not let anyone re-energize a partially installed system. Have a licensed service contractor assess it for safety first. An array that was left mid-install may look complete from the ground and still be unsafe to switch on.

My lender referred a contractor to finish my install. What should I check?

A referral can be legitimate. The conversion order lets the financing partners use their step-in rights to complete open projects (Dkt 533), which means hiring a contractor to do the work. Before work starts, look up the contractor's license with your state's contractor licensing board, such as the Nevada State Contractors Board or California's Contractors State License Board, and confirm the license is active and the name matches the paperwork. Ask your city or county building department for the status of the open permit on your address. Get the remaining scope of work, any price, and who warrants the finished work in writing. Do not let anyone switch the system on until it has passed inspection.

How to file a proof of claim by October 16, 2026

A proof of claim is the form a creditor files to ask to be paid from a bankruptcy estate. A homeowner may have a claim if Freedom Forever took a deposit for a system it never installed, or left an installation unfinished. A workmanship repair the company owed and never performed can also be a claim. Whether you have a claim, and what it is worth, depends on your contract. This section is general information, not legal advice.

Kroll served as the claims agent during the Chapter 11. The conversion order relieved Kroll of that role and directed it to send the claims it had received to the court clerk (Dkt 533). New claims go to the court, so do not use the old Kroll claim portal.

Use the official form. The form is Official Form 410, Proof of Claim. Name the debtor as Freedom Forever LLC and use case number 26-10522.

File online or by mail. The Delaware bankruptcy court accepts claims through its electronic proof of claim page, which asks for the case number first. Paper claims go to United States Bankruptcy Court, Attn: Claims, 824 Market Street, 3rd Floor, Wilmington, DE 19801, per the court's claims information page. The deadline is October 16, 2026, so do not leave a mailed claim to the last few days.

Attach copies, not originals. Include your contract and your payment records. The form warns that originals may be destroyed after scanning. Black out Social Security numbers and full financial account numbers, which the court's filing page requires.

If you paid a deposit. Line 12 of the form lists the kinds of claims the Bankruptcy Code pays ahead of general unsecured claims. One covers up to $3,800 of a deposit an individual paid for household property or services that were never delivered or provided, under 11 U.S.C. 507(a)(7).

If you already filed. Under Bankruptcy Rule 1019(c), a proof of claim filed before the conversion is considered filed in the Chapter 7 case. You do not need to file it again.

Set your expectations carefully. Homeowner claims like these are usually general unsecured claims. They are paid only after secured debt and the claims the Bankruptcy Code ranks ahead of them, and in a liquidation they often recover little or nothing. Filing a claim does not pause your loan or lease payments, and it is no reason to put off a repair your system needs. If you are unsure whether you have a claim or how to value it, talk to a licensed attorney before the deadline.

Where the court case stands

Freedom Forever LLC filed for Chapter 11 on April 15, 2026 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, Case 26-10522 (Dkt 1). On August 3 the company asked the court to convert the case to Chapter 7, telling the court its sale efforts had not succeeded and that it lacked the resources to keep funding the case in Chapter 11 (Dkt 501). The judge signed the conversion order on August 7 (Dkt 533), and the U.S. Trustee appointed Alfred T. Giuliano as the Chapter 7 trustee the same day (Dkt 534).

Chapter 7 is a liquidation. The trustee collects and sells the company's remaining property and pays creditors in the order the Bankruptcy Code sets. Plan on Freedom Forever not answering service calls and not performing warranty work.

On August 17 the court issued the Chapter 7 notice. It set the October 16 claims deadline and scheduled a meeting of creditors for September 22 by Zoom (Dkt 568). That meeting has taken place. A docket entry dated September 23 records it as held and continued, and the entry gives no new date. The next hearing on the docket is October 14, 2026, on the trustee's requests to hire professionals and to abandon personal property of the company (Dkt 625, Dkt 626, Dkt 633).

What is Form 309D?

Official Form 309D is the court's standard notice when a company's Chapter 7 case has a deadline for filing claims. In this case it is the Chapter 7 notice of August 17, 2026 (Dkt 568). Receiving it does not mean you owe anything, and it does not decide whether you have a claim. It lists the case number, the claims deadline and the meeting of creditors described above. Keep it with your contract. If Freedom Forever owes you money or unfinished work, the claim is filed on Official Form 410, as described in how to file a proof of claim. This is general information, not legal advice.

What happened to the Velera bid

Before the conversion, Freedom Forever tried to sell its business. On July 10, 2026 it filed an asset purchase agreement naming Velera Energy, LLC as the stalking horse bidder, meaning the opening bid other buyers would have had to beat (Dkt 383). Brett Bouchy, whom the agreement lists as Freedom Forever's chief executive officer, signed it for Velera as its manager (Dkt 383). The company's later motion to convert the case describes Velera as "an insider of the Debtors" (Dkt 501). The Bankruptcy Code counts a company's officers as insiders (11 U.S.C. 101(31)).

The filed agreement covered Freedom Forever's servicing business, which it described as asset management, servicing, operations and maintenance, billing, collections and monitoring for solar and energy storage systems, including leased and homeowner-owned systems and the related lease, PPA and loan servicing. Velera would have assumed $34 million of secured debt owed to SolarEdge and up to $14 million of certain customer warranty claims listed on a schedule to the agreement. The agreement also listed $3.65 million of customer obligations. The price was the assumption of those liabilities plus cash funding tied to a shortfall reserve, and the agreement sought no break-up fee (Dkt 383).

On July 20, 2026 the company reported to the court that Velera had withdrawn its bid as stalking horse bidder (Dkt 423). Velera later submitted a revised insider bid before the court's July 24 deadline for insider bids. On July 30 the official committee of unsecured creditors told the company it had not qualified that bid, and the company cancelled the sale hearing (Dkt 467). The company then asked the court to convert the case (Dkt 501).

For homeowners, the result is that no buyer took over Freedom Forever's service business or its customer warranty obligations through the Chapter 11 sale.

A seven-step checklist for every Freedom Forever customer

A short list of actions locks in the protection you already have and gets any claim filed before the deadline.

1. Gather the paperwork. Find your contract, system specifications, panel and inverter warranties, completion certificate, permit, and final inspection record. Store originals in a labeled folder and scans in a cloud drive.

2. Register equipment with the manufacturer. Use the model and serial numbers from your install packet to register panels with Canadian Solar, Panasonic, Jinko, or whichever brand you have. This builds a warranty file under your name, not Freedom Forever's.

3. Set up your own inverter monitoring. Create an Enphase Enlighten or SolarEdge account directly. Do not rely on a login that was set up by the installer.

4. Photograph the system today. Capture the roof, array, racking, conduit, inverter, and main panel. These photos are your baseline if you ever need to demonstrate installation quality or document later damage.

5. Export everything available from the Freedom Forever app. Production history and alerts. Save the files locally before access changes.

6. File a proof of claim by October 16, 2026 if Freedom Forever owes you money or unfinished work. Use Official Form 410 and file with the court, as described above.

7. Check your state's contractor recovery fund. Some states run funds for homeowners harmed by a licensed contractor, including Nevada's Residential Recovery Fund and Arizona's Residential Contractors' Recovery Fund. Eligibility rules and filing deadlines differ, so ask your state's contractor licensing board whether a claim involving Freedom Forever's license applies to your installation.

Case facts on this page come from the court docket for Freedom Forever LLC, Case 26-10522 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, read on CourtListener on September 24, 2026. Docket numbers in parentheses refer to that docket. This page is general information, not legal advice.