Solar Insurance for a Florida Home

People use one word, warranty, for four different promises. The manufacturer’s warranty covers defects in the equipment. The installer’s workmanship warranty covers how it was mounted, until that company is gone or the term ends. A home warranty is a service contract for listed appliances. Homeowners insurance pays for sudden damage from a covered cause, such as hail, fire, or a windstorm. This page splits them. The decision of whether insurance problems are a reason to wait is on the skip-solar page. What a storm does to a permitted array is on the hurricane page.

The policy you already have

Most Florida houses are on an HO-3, the standard homeowners form, or something written to look like one. Coverage A is the dwelling, the house itself. Coverage B is other structures, the detached shed or a ground-mounted array that is not part of the house. A typical Coverage B limit is only about 10 percent of Coverage A, which is often too small for a ground mount. Say so before anyone designs one.

A system you own, bolted to the roof, is often treated as part of Coverage A, the same way a new roof or a built-in water heater is. The covered causes then match the rest of the house: wind, hail, lightning, fire, a falling tree, theft, and similar sudden damage, unless the form excludes them. Wear and age are not on that list.

Often is not always. Before the deposit, ask the agent four things in writing, or at least in an email you keep.

• Is the array part of Coverage A, part of Coverage B, or excluded unless you buy an endorsement?
• Is the full cost to replace the panels, the racking, the inverter, and the battery inside the dwelling limit, or is there a cap, sometimes $25,000 or $50,000, that is lower than the system?
• Which deductible applies to wind, and which applies to a hailstorm that is not a hurricane?
• Will adding the system, or failing to tell them about it, give them a reason to non-renew the policy?

There is no trustworthy statewide number for how much the premium goes up. The dwelling limit may need to rise because the house now costs more to rebuild. That can move the premium. A carrier that says “solar adds 10 percent” as a rule of thumb is guessing. Your declarations page is the document.

Send the insurer the permit final and the invoice after the inspection. A system they do not know about is a bad claim. If the company is Citizens or a surplus-lines carrier, ask anyway. The brand does not answer the four questions for you.

The hurricane deductible

Florida defines a hurricane for insurance purposes as a storm the National Hurricane Center has declared a hurricane. Hurricane coverage is the wind damage during a set window: it starts when a hurricane warning is issued for any part of Florida, and it ends 72 hours after the last hurricane watch or warning for any part of the state comes down. When that deductible applies, the policy does not also stack your ordinary deductible on top.

Insurers have to offer hurricane deductible choices of $500, 2 percent, 5 percent, or 10 percent of the dwelling limit, with some exceptions for very expensive homes. On a house insured for $400,000, 2 percent is $8,000 and 5 percent is $20,000. That number comes off the claim before the company pays. A few cracked panels and a section of ridge vent can sit entirely under the deductible. The panels are “covered” and you still write the check.

The deductible applies once per calendar year for hurricanes handled by the same insurer group, not once per storm, if the losses are covered under that group’s policies. A second storm in the same year can land differently from the first. Ask. Do not assume two deductibles, and do not assume zero.

A separate roof deductible, which some policies now carry for a worn-out roof, is not supposed to be applied to roof damage from a hurricane. Hail on a random May afternoon is not automatically a hurricane either. It may fall under the ordinary deductible, which is the better version of this problem, or under a wind deductible. The cause of loss decides the form. The roof page is why an old roof plus this deductible is a bad pair.

A lease is not your equipment

If the system is leased or under a power purchase agreement (PPA), you do not own the panels. The contract is supposed to say who insures them, who repairs hail damage, and who pays to take them off if the roof needs replacing. Their property policy does not repair your torn underlayment, and your homeowners policy may not replace their inverter. Damage during the install is often the contractor’s problem. Damage five years later is a reading of the lease. Get that page before you sign. The financing page is why ownership changes the insurance answer along with the tax answer.

What homeowners insurance does not pay

An inverter that dies at year twelve is old equipment. A panel that has slowly lost output is degradation. A July full of thunderstorms is weather the production model already assumed. None of those are a homeowners claim. Faulty installation is a standard exclusion too. If the flashing was never right and the ceiling stains every August, the path is the installer’s workmanship warranty, then a complaint, not a hail claim you do not have.

Insurance also does not pay for the kilowatt-hours you did not make while the system was down. You get the physical repair, subject to the deductible and the limit, or you do not. Lost savings are on you. The inverter page is the repair you should budget. The installer-gone page is what happens when the workmanship warranty dies with the company and the equipment warranty is all that is left.

Liability, the utility, and the crew on the roof

There is a second insurance question that is not about hail. It is about someone getting hurt, or the array damaging the utility’s equipment.

For Duke Energy Florida, Florida Power & Light (FPL), Tampa Electric, and Florida Public Utilities, the state interconnection rule does not let the utility require a liability policy on a Tier 1 system, which is 10 kilowatts or smaller. The utility may recommend one. It may require no more than $1 million on Tier 2 and no more than $2 million on Tier 3. A salesperson who says an ordinary house system cannot be connected without a special $1 million solar policy is not describing that rule. Your homeowners liability coverage is still worth confirming. The rule is about what the utility can demand. The laws page has the tiers.

During the job, the contractor’s insurance is the one that should answer if a worker falls or a panel goes through the deck. Florida requires licensed contractors to carry liability and property-damage insurance, and construction companies generally must carry workers’ compensation or a filed exemption. The state minimums are not impressive next to a hospital bill. Ask for certificates before the crew arrives, with you named where the insurer will allow it, and do not let an uninsured day-labor crew on the roof because the price was lower. If they will not show the certificates, they are the wrong company.

Flood is a different policy

A homeowners policy does not cover flood. Standing water from storm surge or a canal is a flood policy, usually the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) or a private flood carrier. NFIP building coverage for a house tops out at $250,000, which may not rebuild the house, and contents are separate and capped at $100,000. If you are in a flood zone, the solar question is an extra line on a policy you already needed. If you are not, do not buy a flood policy just because you bought panels.

Read the flood form before you store the battery in the garage. FEMA’s claims commentary on the standard flood policy is narrow about batteries installed in a basement or below the lowest floor of certain elevated buildings. A battery that is part of the building’s everyday power can be treated differently from a backup battery, which the commentary groups with a generator and can exclude in that below-floor spot. Roof-mounted panels are not that garage question. Ask the flood insurer whether the array and the battery are building property on your policy, and for how many dollars. Do not assume the line that mentions pumps and tanks on old solar water heaters is a promise about your photovoltaic system.

The home warranty is for the air conditioner

A home warranty, the kind pitched with a resale or sold next to an air-conditioning tune-up, is a service contract. You pay a monthly or annual fee, then a service call fee, and the company sends a contractor to repair items named in the contract, up to a dollar cap. It is not regulated as homeowners insurance. It does not pay for hurricane damage. The companies say so. Weather, flood, fire, and lightning are typical exclusions even for the appliances that are covered.

The covered list is the heating and cooling system, the water heater, the electrical panel, the plumbing, and, on a richer plan, the refrigerator and the dishwasher. Solar is not on that list.

American Home Shield’s published electrical coverage is a clear example. It covers the panel, the breakers, the switches, and the house wiring. It says it does not cover direct-current wiring or components, or any home generator and the wiring that goes with it. A photovoltaic array is a direct-current system. A backup battery is in the same neighborhood as the generator exclusion. That page does not offer a solar rider to undo it. Other national home-warranty plans are built the same way. They will repair a failed air handler. They will not replace a 12-year-old string inverter because you have been paying $40 a month.

Roof-leak coverage, when a plan offers it at all, is a small cap and a list of holes they will not pay for. Published summaries of those add-ons commonly exclude leaks associated with solar panel mounts, skylights, and similar penetrations. The flashing around a solar post is the installer’s work and your roofer’s work. It is not why you bought an appliance plan. Read the exclusion page anyway, because the contract in your state controls, not a summary.

A third product sometimes gets sold in the same breath. Some installers offer an extended warranty or a production guarantee from a third party, meant to pick up labor after their own workmanship term, or to pay if the system misses a production floor. That can be worth reading. It is still not hail insurance, and it is still not a home warranty. The triggers are in the certificate. If the company selling it is the same company that may not exist in five years, ask who actually pays the claim.

What to keep in the folder

• The email from the homeowners agent answering the four questions, sent before you pay the deposit.
• The declarations page after the system is added, showing the dwelling limit and both deductibles.
• The contractor’s liability and workers’ compensation certificates.
• The equipment warranties, registered in your name, and the workmanship term.
• If the system is leased, the page that says who insures the equipment and who removes it for a reroof.
• The home-warranty contract only if you already have one, with the electrical and roof-leak exclusions marked. Do not buy one to cover the array.

The useful phone call is the one to the insurer before the contract, not the one to an appliance-warranty salesperson after the inverter fails. Insurance replaces a system a storm broke, subject to a deductible that can be the whole repair. A home warranty was never the plan for that, or for old age. The manufacturer’s warranty is the plan for a defect. Budget the rest.

This page is general information, not an insurance opinion about your policy. The form, the endorsements, and the declarations page control the claim.