My Sunrun Experience

In November 2011, Sunrun installed a solar energy system on the roof of my home in Westlake Village, California. The system was placed under a 20-year lease by a previous homeowner. When I purchased the property, the lease transferred to me — obligating me to purchase every kilowatt-hour the system generates at a rate that escalates 2.9% annually. In exchange, Sunrun owns, operates, maintains, and monitors the equipment for the life of the contract.

For the first several years, the system worked as described. Then, beginning in early 2024, it started shutting itself down. Not once. Not occasionally. Repeatedly — 237 times over two years, triggered by the same recurring ground fault condition. Each shutdown killed power production for the remainder of the day. Each event was logged by the inverter and transmitted to Sunrun's monitoring infrastructure. None of them generated an alert, a phone call, or a service visit.

I discovered the problem myself in February 2026 — not because Sunrun told me, but because I noticed my electricity bills climbing. When I investigated, I found not just the electrical fault, but a separate set of installation defects on the roof: abandoned penetrations, missing flashing, and code violations that have been exposed to the weather since the original installation in 2011.

This site documents what I found. Every data point presented here is derived from Sunrun's own monitoring systems, my utility records, and physical inspections of the equipment on my property. The production data comes from Sunrun's API. The fault events were detected from that same data. The photographs were taken by my own drone and camera.

What You'll Find Here

The System
Hardware, specs, and what the inverter reports
The Lease
Terms, economics, and the rate escalator
Ground Faults
237 events over 2 years
The Roof
Installation defects and code violations
Monitoring Failure
What Sunrun knew and when they knew it
Summary
The full picture — everything in one place
About the Author

I am a software engineer and entrepreneur with decades of experience in technology and systems. I am not a solar specialist — but I know how to read data, write code, and build a case from primary sources. When I inherited a 20-year solar lease with the purchase of my home, I deliberately took a hands-off approach: Sunrun owned the equipment, and I trusted them to monitor and maintain it. I didn't question the system until my utility bills forced me to. Everything presented on this site — the data analysis, the fault detection methodology, the financial calculations — is my own work.