Last week the phone rang. A woman, sounding a little anxious, was asking about the status of her solar panel subsidy. We asked for her details to look her up in our system. She wasn't there.
We have more than 1,000 customers across Spain, so we assumed it was a mix-up with the contract holder's name. We asked whose name the contract was under. We checked. And then we understood: she wasn't our customer. She was a customer of another company. A company that had just gone bankrupt.
The striking part is that two years earlier this same person had contacted us. She asked A Todo Sol for a quote. Our salesperson couldn't match the price she was offered elsewhere —it simply couldn't be done properly for that money— and she, understandably, chose the cheapest option. She installed with the other company.
Today that company has closed. And with it, her subsidy application has been left hanging, and will most likely be lost. But the grant money is only part of it. What this woman has really lost is harder to recover: a point of reference. Someone to call. Technical support, guidance, a familiar face that answers when her installation fails in five, ten or fifteen years.
We offered to help her anyway. But we couldn't help thinking out loud about an uncomfortable question: won't the whole process now cost her far more than she saved?
Not an isolated case: the self-consumption crash
The company we're talking about is Social Energy (Senerco Energy Services SL), a well-known Seville installer once held up as a model in the sector. On 20 March 2026, Seville's Commercial Court No. 1 declared its voluntary insolvency (proceedings 180/2026), at the company's own request after acknowledging its insolvency. It's a public fact, reported by the press and by consumer organisations such as OCU and FACUA.
And it's not alone. Over the past two years Spanish solar self-consumption has been through an earthquake: SolarProfit in pre-insolvency with a 90% workforce layoff and more than 800 affected customers, Holaluz with millions in losses, Soltec, EiDF, Sunalizer shutting down... The sector has now strung together three consecutive years of contraction after the 2022 bubble. When the wind stopped blowing in their favour, many of the companies that grew fast and cheap ran out of air.
What the reviews say (and how to actually read them)
If you look at Social Energy's profile on Trustpilot, you'll see something worth learning to interpret: an average score of 3.3 out of 5 across more than 2,600 reviews, where 82% are 5 stars... but 13% are 1 star.
That "U" shaped pattern —lots of 5 stars and a growing block of 1 star, almost nothing in between— is the portrait of a company that worked during the boom and collapsed afterwards. The 5 stars are from 2022–2024, when installations were done quickly. The 1 stars are the collapse: customers writing in 2025 and 2026 things like "there's no way to reach them, I've been calling for two days", "I paid for maintenance, they charged me and never showed up" or "my subsidy rejected because of their poor handling".
The lesson isn't "don't trust reviews". It's: don't look only at the average score. Look at the trend of the last few months and the percentage of 1-star reviews. That's where a company's truth lives.
The three blows the customer takes
When your installer disappears, you don't lose one thing. You lose three:
1. The money paid up front
Many affected customers paid between 65% and 100% in advance and were left with a half-finished installation, or none at all. And here's the worst part: in an insolvency, the individual customer is at the back of the queue. The real chance of getting the money back is very low.
2. The vanished subsidy
This is the most repeated blow. The company was listed as the contact for the application to the administration. When it closed, it stopped responding to requests, and many customers lost the grant without even realising something needed fixing. Exactly what happened to the woman who called us.
3. The orphaned warranty and support
A solar installation lasts 25 years. Who honours your warranty when whoever signed it no longer exists? Who does the maintenance, who fixes an inverter fault, who picks up the phone on a Sunday? That's not in the quote, but it's exactly what separates a good solar experience from a bad one.
The real price of saving 800 euros
We keep meeting more people who'd rather save 800 euros by choosing a lone freelancer or one of these "I install for a few years and disappear" companies, instead of choosing stability.
We get it. Price matters, a lot. But let's do the full maths: if you save €800 today and tomorrow you lose a subsidy worth several thousand, you're left without a warranty and have to hire (and pay again) for the paperwork and support you'd already paid for once... that saving becomes the most expensive line of your whole installation.
It's not about being the cheapest. It's about still being there ten years from now.
How to choose an installer in 2026: red flags
- They ask for 100% up front. A solvent company doesn't need your money before doing the work.
- They promise "two subsidies" that sound too good. Often only one is compatible. If they tell you after you sign, bad sign.
- Whoever handles your grant lists themselves as the contact with the administration, instead of you. If they vanish, you hear nothing.
- They subcontract the installation. If the team entering your home isn't the company's own, who answers later?
- Recent reviews nosediving. Look at the last three months, not the historical average.
- No years behind them or clear accounts. Ask how long they've been around, how many installations they've done, whether they have their own technical team.
And if your installer has already gone bankrupt? What you can do
If you recognise yourself in this story, you're not alone and not everything is lost:
- Gather all the documentation: contract, invoice, proof of payment and any communication.
- File your claim with the insolvency administrator within the deadline (in Social Energy's case, the administration is handled by Summa Iuris).
- Go to OCU or FACUA: they're grouping affected customers and there are collective complaints under way.
- Check your subsidy status directly with the administration, in case you're still in time to fix it.
- Find a stable company to adopt your installation: for maintenance, warranties and support. We do that, including installations we didn't build.
At A Todo Sol, above all, we are people
We told that woman yes. That we'd help her anyway, even though she wasn't our customer, even though two years ago she chose someone else. Because we believe in what we do and because, before being a solar panel company, we are human.
We've spent years crossing Spain installation by installation, and we've learned one thing: solar energy isn't about panels, it's about 25 years of trust. It's about someone who knows you picking up the phone when you call. You can't shave 800 euros off that. It's either there, or it isn't.
Sources: Trustpilot, OCU, FACUA. Information as of May 2026.