Swell Energy wound down in 2024. Does your home battery still have a warranty, and who services it now?

Swell Energy was a Los Angeles company built around virtual power plants: instead of a battery just sitting in your garage waiting for an outage, Swell enrolled it in a program where the utility could draw on stored power during periods of high demand, with the homeowner compensated for participating.

It ran those programs with San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and PG&E, and by May 2021 had announced a battery offer aimed at 8,000 customers across Southern California. In August 2024, Swell announced it was winding down its operations. Some subsequent coverage frames this as a restructuring away from consumer installation rather than a full corporate shutdown, a distinction that matters to lawyers and creditors but not to a homeowner whose battery just faulted.

Your equipment warranty is intact

A Tesla Powerwall, LG, Enphase, or SolarEdge warranty is a promise from the manufacturer, not from Swell. Those companies are still operating, and those warranties survive whatever happened to the installer. The catch is procedural: filing a claim generally requires a licensed contractor to diagnose the failure, document it, pull the affected part, and handle the paperwork. We do that work for our customers, and in many cases can replace failed equipment at no cost to you under the manufacturer's warranty.

Your installation warranty is a different story

The promise that covered the electrical work, the mounting hardware, and any roof penetrations came from the installer, in this case Swell. When the installer is gone, that promise usually has no one behind it. That is the practical reality, not legal advice, and it is the same pattern we see with every failed solar and battery installer.

Your financing agreement continues

A loan or lease on the battery is a separate contract with a separate company. It does not cancel because the installer wound down. If you are unsure who holds yours, the paperwork from your original installation names the financing company.

Your VPP enrollment is between you and the utility

We are a contractor, not a program administrator. Questions about whether you are still enrolled in the virtual power plant program or still being credited for participation go to SDG&E or SCE directly. What we can tell you is whether the hardware itself is healthy enough to be worth staying enrolled in the first place. General background on how these demand-response programs are regulated is available from the CPUC.

A home battery is not a set-it-and-forget-it appliance the way solar panels mostly are. Cells degrade over time, inverters fault, firmware falls behind, and the monitoring that was supposed to alert you tends to go quiet first, especially when the portal was set up under the installer's account instead of your own.

We regularly find batteries that have been sitting at partial capacity, or not cycling at all, for the better part of a year. The homeowner had no idea, because the app still opened and still showed a screen. It just wasn't showing the real state of the hardware behind it.

The homeowner had no idea, because the app still opened and still showed a screen.

• A $399 system and roof inspection report, credited toward your job: battery state of health, inverter and connector inspection, a production audit if you also have solar, and a look at every roof penetration the original crew made, with findings in writing.
• Diagnostics and repair under an active C-10 electrical license: failed inverters, communication faults, rapid-shutdown issues, and the manufacturer warranty claims that go with them.
• Monitoring restoration: getting your Tesla Powerwall, Enphase, or SolarEdge portal registered under your own name so you can actually see what your system is doing.
• Detach-and-reset for reroofs: we hold roofing (C-39), general building (B), and electrical (C-10) licenses under one company, so one crew removes the array, replaces the roof, and reinstalls the system, without finger-pointing between two contractors.
• Adding or expanding storage: sizing more solar battery capacity onto an existing array, with NEM 3.0 economics in mind if your system is on the newer tariff.

If the roof under your array needs attention along with the battery itself, our roof inspection and solar panel removal and reinstallation services are built to handle both in a single visit.

Plenty of Swell battery customers also have panels from a solar company that has since closed: Titan Solar Power, SunPower, PetersenDean, Sungevity, Sullivan Solar Power, Vivint Solar, SolarCity, and Freedom Forever are among the names we hear most often from San Diego homeowners in this situation.

The pattern is the same regardless of which company it was: the equipment warranty likely survives with the manufacturer, and the installation warranty likely does not survive the closure. A solar panel repair visit can sort out which category your specific problem falls into.

Equipment claims are easiest to file while serial numbers, install paperwork, and part records are still straightforward to match to the manufacturer's system. A battery that has quietly lost capacity is also a battery that is not earning its keep, and if you are still making a loan or lease payment on it either way, that gap is money leaving your account for nothing.

The U.S. Department of Energy publishes general homeowner guidance on solar and storage system maintenance if you want a source outside of us. One visit tells you where you actually stand, and the $399 report is credited in full toward any work you hire us for.

Book a solar or battery inspection or contact us directly. Estimates are always free, no deposit, no pressure.