My Solar System Stopped Working — What Do I Do?

You looked at the monitoring app and saw zero. Or your electric bill jumped back to pre-solar levels. Or the inverter is showing a light you have never seen before. Before you call anyone, work through the three checks below. Most failures resolve in under fifteen minutes — a tripped breaker, a lost internet connection, a grid event the inverter is still recovering from. And when they do not, you will arrive at the technician call with the exact information that makes the diagnosis fast.

Step 1: confirm it is not weather, time, or the grid

Solar systems produce zero at night and almost nothing at dawn or dusk, so a 7 PM reading of zero is not a fault. On a heavily overcast day, production drops by 50 to 90 percent. If the app shows a small but nonzero number on a cloudy day, the system is working.

Grid outages matter too. Grid-tied inverters are required by safety code to disconnect when utility power goes out, and they take 5 to 15 minutes to reconnect after power comes back. If your neighborhood had an outage in the last 24 hours, the inverter may still be cycling back on.

Finally, look at the exact error message in the monitoring app. "No data" points to a communications problem. "System offline" points to the inverter not running. "Grid event detected" points to the inverter waiting on the utility. The wording often narrows the diagnosis before you do anything else, so write it down.

Step 2: read the inverter's LED, not the app

The monitoring app depends on internet connectivity and a working monitoring gateway. The inverter's status LED does not. When the two disagree, trust the LED.

Find the inverter — usually a wall-mounted box in the garage, utility room, or on the side of the house. Look at the LED display and match it against this pattern, which is consistent across most brands:

• Solid green: producing normally.
• Blinking green: producing but no internet, or starting up. May normalize within 15 to 30 minutes.
• Solid amber or yellow: warning or fault. Note any error code on the display.
• Solid red: hardware error. The inverter is not producing.
• No light at all: no power reaching the inverter. Check the solar breaker first.

If the inverter has a small screen, it will usually show an error code alongside an amber or red LED. Photograph the code before you do anything else. The manufacturer's homeowner support line can almost always interpret it remotely, and many issues turn out to be configuration problems they can fix without sending anyone out.

For Enphase systems the LED is on the Envoy communications gateway, not the inverters themselves, since microinverters live under each panel. Solid green on the Envoy means it is communicating with the microinverters and the cloud. Blinking green means production is happening but the internet link is down — a monitoring problem, not a production problem.

Step 3: reset the solar breaker and the AC disconnect

A tripped breaker is the single most common — and most easily fixed — cause of sudden zero production. Solar systems have a dedicated breaker in the main electrical panel, and it can trip from grid surges, lightning, or minor internal faults.

Open the main panel and look for any breaker sitting in the middle position, not fully on and not fully off. That is a tripped breaker. Find the one labeled "Solar," "PV," "Inverter," or similar. Push it all the way to off, wait 30 seconds, then back to on. Wait five minutes and re-check the inverter LED.

If the breaker trips again immediately, stop. A breaker that re-trips is protecting the system from a real fault, and resetting it repeatedly is unsafe. Call a service technician instead.

Also check the AC disconnect — a separate switch, usually near the inverter, labeled "AC Disconnect" or "Solar Disconnect." It should be in the on position. These switches get accidentally bumped to off more often than you would expect, especially in garages, and the symptom looks exactly like an inverter failure.

If everything is on, the inverter LED is green, but the monitoring app still shows zero, the problem is the monitoring link, not production. Restart your home router and power-cycle the monitoring gateway before assuming anything is broken.

When it is urgent, and who to call once your installer is gone

Not every failure needs same-day service. Call within 24 hours for any burning smell, smoke, visible arcing, burn marks, physical damage to the inverter, a breaker that re-trips on every reset, or a system that was never finished. Schedule a service call within one to two weeks for a persistent red or amber LED that does not clear after a power cycle, an error code you cannot interpret, production more than 20 percent below normal for several days, or individual panels offline for more than a few days. No urgent action is needed when the LED is green but the app shows zero (a monitoring problem), when production dips during heavy weather, or when a single microinverter briefly goes offline.

If your original installer is no longer reachable, call the inverter manufacturer's homeowner support line first. They can pull remote diagnostics from your serial number, interpret error codes, and confirm whether the issue is a hardware failure (often still under warranty), a configuration problem they can fix remotely, or something needing an on-site visit:

• Enphase: 1-877-797-1476
• SolarEdge: 1-510-498-3200
• SMA: 1-916-625-0870
• Fronius US: 1-877-376-6487
• Generac PWRcell: 1-888-436-3722

For installation-related issues — roof penetrations, wiring, leaks — you need a service contractor instead. Our guide to finding a qualified solar service contractor → walks through the licensing and insurance checks that matter.