No Solar in My Suburb

  • There are some state laws that say homeowners' associations can't stop the construction of solar panels. (Photo courtesy of Standard Renewable Energy)

More people are putting up solar
panels on their houses. But in
some places around the country,
solar panels are getting blocked
by homeowners’ associations. Mark
Brush has more:

Transcript

More people are putting up solar
panels on their houses. But in
some places around the country,
solar panels are getting blocked
by homeowners’ associations. Mark
Brush has more:

It comes down to aesthetics for a lot of these associations. They have rules about how tall your grass can be, when trash cans can be set out, and what color your house can be.

Sometimes these associations just don’t like solar panels, or they worry they’ll be sued by neighbors.

Raymond Walker is a lawyer for Standard Renewable Energy. It’s a fast growing solar installation company in Texas. He says these restrictive rules can cost jobs and money.

“It doesn’t seem at first blush like it ought to be a big problem, in fact, you know, it seems like it might be sort of a silly issue, but we lost about $500,00 in installation money in 2008 because of this, and we’re projecting that we’ll lose about two million dollars this year.”

There are some state laws that say homeowners’ associations can’t stop the construction of solar panels, and now some legislators want to see a federal law passed.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links