09/01/2026
Eighteen.
That is how many residential solar retailers had registered with the State of Texas the day before registration became mandatory. About 500 salespersons. In one of the largest residential solar markets in the country.
Registration opened August 10 under Senate Bill 1036, and as of September 1 solar retailers and individual salespersons must hold a Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation registration to sell or lease residential solar. The prohibited-acts provisions became enforceable the same day.
Here is what actually matters for a homeowner or an agent. There is now a free public registry. Anyone can search it. Until this week, a Texas homeowner had no way to check whether the person standing on their porch was accountable to any state agency. Now there is a name to look up and an agency that will take the complaint.
Two things I would not want anyone to get wrong.
An absent name is not a fraud signal. Most of the market simply has not filed yet. Treat it as a question to raise, not a conclusion to draw.
And the law does not cover power purchase agreements at all. Not partly. Not eventually. At all. So two homeowners on the same street, with the same panels, sold by the same person on the same afternoon, end up in different positions. The one who signed a loan or a lease gets a registry, a code of conduct, a five business day cancellation right, and a complaint path. The one who signed a PPA gets none of it.
Same roof. Same salesperson. Same day.
I wrote up what changed, what it covers, what it does not, and the complaint jurisdiction split that most people are going to miss:
https://www.christinaeducation.com/texas-solar-company-registry-september
Educational only, not legal advice. I am not licensed in Texas.