Not legal advice. Solar Exit Group is not a law firm, does not provide legal advice, and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of Participate, Freedom Forever, or any court. This page summarizes public reporting, official company information, and publicly posted court procedures for informational purposes. Deadlines and procedures in a bankruptcy case can change by court order. Verify any date against the court docket and any contact detail against the company's own website before relying on it, and talk to a licensed attorney in your state about your own situation.
Last updated: September 11, 2026.
Short answer
Your agreement is still enforceable. Participate.Energy LLC did not file for bankruptcy, and Freedom Forever's Chapter 7 liquidation does not cancel or pause it.
Your own contract matters more here than on any other lender page. Participate publishes very little: no customer support page, no FAQ, no homeowner portal, and no service terms. The only phone number we could verify on its own website appears in its terms of use, not on a support page. That means the document you signed is effectively the only authority on your rights. Find it before you call.
Its product is unusual. Participate markets systems "at no up-front cost, with no credit check, and no property lien," billed through "an on-bill tariff" with "locked-in energy rates over a 25-year agreement" (Participate Energy). A 25-year obligation tied to your utility bill is a substantially different instrument from a solar loan, and it deserves a careful read.
Participate has court permission to finish your install. It is one of seven financing partners granted relief from the automatic stay (pv magazine USA). The published contact is (844) 288-4523.
At a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Who they are | Participate.Energy LLC, also styled Participate Energy, a third-party-ownership provider of solar and battery systems rather than a bank. Its published address is 2093 Philadelphia Pike #3125, Claymont, DE 19703 (terms of use). No headquarters city is stated on its own website |
| What they financed | An on-bill tariff with a 25-year term, plus a Prepaid Lease product (homepage, prepaid lease) |
| Loan, lease, or PPA | Neither a conventional loan nor a standard PPA. An on-bill tariff and a prepaid lease, which are third-party-ownership structures |
| Who owns your system | Participate, under these structures, not you |
| Homeowner phone | (844) 288-4523 and support@participate.energy, published in its terms of use rather than on a support page (terms of use) |
| Dedicated support page | None found on its website |
| Account portal | None found. No homeowner portal or app is named or linked on its website |
| Credit check | Marketed as requiring none: "no credit check" (homepage) |
| Statement on Freedom Forever | None found as of September 11, 2026 |
| Stay relief to finish installs | Yes, one of seven financing partners granted it (pv magazine USA) |
| Liens | Participate markets "no property lien." It does not address UCC-1 or fixture filings on the equipment either way, so verify with your county recorder |
| Regulatory actions found | None located in official sources. It is not named in the Texas or Minnesota solar actions |
| BBB record | No BBB profile found for Participate.Energy LLC. A similarly named but unrelated company, Participant Energy California Inc., has its own profile and should not be confused with it |
| Claim deadline against Freedom Forever | October 16, 2026 |
Why Participate can still bill you when Freedom Forever is gone
Freedom Forever LLC installed your system. Participate financed it. Those are two different companies with two different contracts, and only one of them is in bankruptcy.
Freedom Forever filed Chapter 11 on April 15, 2026 and the case converted to Chapter 7 liquidation on August 7, 2026 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, case 26-10522, before Judge Brendan L. Shannon, with Alfred T. Giuliano appointed as Chapter 7 trustee (pv magazine USA). Chapter 7 means the company is being wound down and sold off, not reorganized. There is no version of this case where Freedom Forever comes back and finishes your job.
Your financing agreement with Participate is a separate obligation. Participate did not file for bankruptcy, so nothing in the Freedom Forever case discharges, cancels, voids, or pauses what you owe. If you simply stop paying, the consequences fall on you, not on the bankrupt installer. Because Participate's core product is billed through an on-bill tariff tied to your utility account rather than as a conventional consumer loan, the consequences of nonpayment may run through your utility relationship. That is an unusual and potentially serious difference, and a reason to get the terms in front of someone before you change anything.
There is one piece of genuinely useful news buried in the court reporting. Participate is one of seven financing partners that obtained relief from the automatic stay in the Freedom Forever case, specifically so they could resume and complete stranded installations, hire replacement contractors, and get systems through to permission to operate (pv magazine USA). The other six are Credit Human, EnFin, EverBright, GoodLeap, Participate, Project Solar, and Sunrun.
What that means in practice. The automatic stay is the freeze that stops everyone from acting on a bankrupt company's contracts and property. Until it was lifted, a lender that wanted to send a new crew to finish your half-built system arguably could not touch the job. Now Participate has express court permission to do exactly that. Stay relief is permission, not an obligation, and the court did not order Participate to finish any particular home. But it removes the one excuse that actually held water. If you are told your project cannot move because of the bankruptcy, that answer is out of date.
What you actually signed, and why it is harder to pin down
Participate's product is genuinely different from the loans and leases the other six partners wrote, and the difference is the most important thing on this page.
Its homepage describes systems provided "at no up-front cost, with no credit check, and no property lien," where "customers simply pay for the energy the system produces through an on-bill tariff," with "locked-in energy rates over a 25-year agreement" (Participate Energy). Separately it markets a Prepaid Lease, which it describes as "designed to give homeowners the ability to manage the system on their home with no additional recurring costs for the entire term unless they choose to finance the lease with a third-party lender," adding that "we partner with several loan providers who can help finance the down payment portion of the prepayment" (Participate Energy, Prepaid Lease).
Three implications worth sitting with.
An on-bill tariff is not a loan. The charge rides on your utility bill rather than arriving as a separate lender statement. Because of that, the usual mental model of "stop paying the lender and face credit consequences" may not map cleanly, and the consequences could instead run through your utility account. That is a materially different risk profile and it is not something to experiment with. Get the agreement reviewed before changing your payment behavior.
The "no credit check" pitch attracted a specific population. Homeowners who could not qualify for conventional solar financing were routed to structures like this one. That is not inherently improper, but it is precisely the sales context in which state consumer-protection statutes, home solicitation rules, and disclosure requirements matter most.
Twenty-five years is a long time. Locate the escalator provision, the transfer requirements if you sell, the early termination or buyout formula, and whatever the agreement says about system performance. On a 25-year instrument these terms, not the monthly number, determine what the deal is actually worth.
Because Participate publishes no FAQ, no service terms, and no support page, there is no company-published policy to lean on. Your signed agreement is the authority. If you cannot find your copy, request a complete one, including all exhibits, in writing.
What Participate has publicly said about Freedom Forever
Nothing. As of September 11, 2026, a review of Participate Energy's homepage, prepaid lease page, terms of use, and privacy policy, its About Us page being unreachable at the time of review found no press release, no customer notice, no FAQ entry, and no dedicated page about the Freedom Forever bankruptcy or about how stranded Freedom Forever installations will be completed.
This matters for a practical reason. There is no published policy for you to point to, no announced remediation program to enroll in, and no promised timeline to hold anyone to. Whatever happens with your system will be negotiated one account at a time, by phone, by whoever calls and documents it. That is an argument for calling early and writing everything down, not for waiting to see what gets announced.
It also means you should treat any third-party website claiming to describe "Participate's Freedom Forever program" with real suspicion. Several sites appeared in 2026 offering to handle solar bankruptcy claims for a fee. Filing a proof of claim in the Freedom Forever case is free.
If your system was never finished, never inspected, or never turned on
This is the group with the most leverage and the shortest window to use it. Freedom Forever left homes at every stage of incompletion: panels on the roof but no inverter, equipment in the garage, a full install that never passed inspection, a system that passed inspection but never received permission to operate from the utility.
If that is your situation, the order of operations matters.
- Call Participate at (844) 288-4523, the number published in its terms of use, alongside support@participate.energy and open a documented file. Say plainly that Freedom Forever was liquidated in Chapter 7, that your system is incomplete, and that you understand Participate obtained relief from the automatic stay to hire replacement contractors and complete installations. Ask for a ticket or reference number and the name of the person you spoke to.
- Ask the specific question, in writing. Will Participate assign a replacement contractor to complete the installation and carry it to permission to operate, and by when? Send it by email as well as saying it on the phone. Participate publishes support@participate.energy and a mailing address of 2093 Philadelphia Pike #3125, Claymont, DE 19703. With a company this lightly documented, put everything in writing and keep copies.
- Ask what happens to payments in the meantime. Participate has published no payment-relief policy. Because its product charges you for energy the system produces, a system that was never energized produces nothing, which is a direct question to put in writing. Get the answer in writing before you rely on it, and never assume a verbal assurance survives a change of representative.
- Photograph everything now. The roof, the equipment, the electrical panel, any boxes still sealed in your garage, and any damage. Date-stamped photographs of an unfinished install are the most persuasive documents in this entire situation, and they get harder to produce once someone else works on the system.
- Keep paying attention to your permit. Building permits expire. If your permit was pulled under Freedom Forever's contractor license, that license is winding down with the company, and a replacement contractor may need to pull a new permit or have the existing one transferred. Call your city or county building department and ask about the status of the permit on your address. This is the step almost nobody takes, and it is often the real reason a project sits still.
Do not let a stalled system quietly become a permanent one. A system that never reached permission to operate produces nothing, saves nothing, and in most financing structures still bills you. Every month of silence makes the paper trail colder.
Who covers your warranty now
Solar warranties on a Freedom Forever install came in layers, and the layers failed unevenly. Sorting out which one covers a given problem is the difference between a covered repair and an out-of-pocket one.
| Layer | Who backed it | Status after liquidation |
|---|---|---|
| Panel product warranty | The panel manufacturer | Generally still valid. It is the manufacturer's promise, not the installer's, and is unaffected by Freedom Forever's liquidation. You need your equipment model numbers to use it. |
| Inverter warranty | The inverter manufacturer | Generally still valid, same reasoning. Inverters fail more often than panels, so this is the layer most homeowners actually need. |
| Battery warranty | The battery manufacturer | Generally still valid, if you have storage. |
| Workmanship and roof-penetration warranty | Freedom Forever itself | This is the layer that broke. A workmanship warranty from a company in Chapter 7 liquidation is an unsecured claim, not a service you can call and use. Roof leaks around mounts fall here. |
| Production or savings guarantee | Depends on your contract | Participate markets "locked-in energy rates over a 25-year agreement" and charges for energy produced, so a non-producing system is a contractual question rather than a warranty question. Read your agreement. |
| System monitoring, service, and maintenance | Participate, as the third-party owner of the system | Under a third-party-ownership structure the finance company generally retains the system obligations, which works in your favor. Participate publishes no service or maintenance terms on its website, so your own agreement is the only authority. Find it and read it. |
Two practical consequences. First, manufacturer warranties are usually honored but almost always require a licensed installer to perform the labor, and they rarely cover that labor cost. A free replacement inverter can still leave you paying several hundred dollars to have it installed. Second, the workmanship layer is the one that covers roof leaks, and it is the one that is gone. If water is entering your home around a solar mount, treat that as an urgent roofing problem to solve on its own timeline, not something to wait on a bankruptcy case for. A roof leak that goes unaddressed becomes a structural and mold problem that costs many multiples of the repair.
Find your equipment model numbers and serial numbers now, while you can. They appear on your installation documents, your interconnection application, your permit paperwork, on your utility bill, and on the equipment labels themselves. Without them, a manufacturer warranty claim stalls before it starts.
Liens, filings, and the limits of what is published
Participate markets its systems as coming with "no property lien" (Participate Energy). That is the company's own characterization, and it is the only statement on the subject we could find on its website.
What its site does not address is whether it records UCC-1 financing statements or county fixture filings against the solar equipment. Third-party-owned solar commonly involves such filings, and the distinction companies draw, as GoodLeap, EnFin, and Sunrun all do explicitly in their own materials, is that a filing on the equipment is not a mortgage lien on the house. Participate simply does not discuss it.
So verify it yourself rather than relying on marketing copy:
- Search your county recorder's index for your address. Look for anything naming Participate, Participate.Energy LLC, or Freedom Forever. Most counties offer this free online.
- Ask in writing. Email support@participate.energy and ask directly whether any UCC-1 or fixture filing has been recorded relating to your system, and request a copy of any that has. Keep the email.
- Ask for the buyout number. Request the early termination or purchase option figure in writing, along with the provision it comes from. On a 25-year agreement, this number is often the deciding fact in any decision you make.
If you are selling or refinancing, start this at least 60 days out. With a company that publishes no process, response times are unpredictable, and a title issue discovered during escrow is a genuinely expensive problem.
Whether the lease or PPA itself can be challenged
A lease or power purchase agreement is legally different from a loan, and the difference cuts both ways.
The good news is that Participate owns the equipment under these structures, so the obligation to keep the system working and maintained sits with the company rather than with you or with a liquidated installer. The harder news is that the FTC's Holder in Due Course Rule, 16 CFR Part 433, which lets a consumer assert claims against the holder of dealer-arranged credit paper, maps awkwardly onto a lease or a PPA. A third-party-ownership agreement is generally not a consumer credit contract in that sense, so the most commonly cited route to challenging installer misconduct through the finance company is a less direct fit here. Where homeowners do get traction, it is usually through state unfair and deceptive trade practices statutes, home improvement or home solicitation sales statutes, contract defenses such as failure of consideration when the system never operated, and state-specific solar disclosure laws. No attorney general lawsuit, CFPB enforcement action, or class action involving Participate was located in official sources as of September 11, 2026, and it is not named in the Texas Attorney General's solar initiative or the Minnesota solar-lending suit. We also found no BBB profile for the company. One caution if you research this yourself: a differently named company, Participant Energy California Inc., has its own separate BBB profile and is not the same business.
The thin public record cuts both ways, and it is worth being honest about. There is no pattern of documented regulatory trouble here, which is a fair point in the company's favor. But there is also very little published information of any kind: no service terms, no FAQ, no support page, no portal, and no headquarters city on its own website. For a homeowner, that combination argues for documenting everything in writing yourself, because there is no public policy record to fall back on later.
Long-term agreements in this category also carry terms worth reading before you make any decision: escalator clauses that raise your rate annually, transfer requirements and credit qualification when you sell the home, early-termination or buyout formulas, and production guarantees whose remedy is often a credit rather than an exit. These are the provisions that determine your real options, and almost nobody reads them until there is a problem.
The CFPB's CFPB Issue Spotlight on solar financing is useful background on how these deals were sold, even where its focus is lending. If your agreement contains an arbitration clause, our account of a solar lender losing in arbitration shows what that process actually looks like, and how to get out of a solar contract covers the general landscape.
What we will not tell you is that a lease or PPA is easy to exit. It usually is not. An honest assessment of a weak file is more valuable than an encouraging one.
Your October 16 claim against Freedom Forever is a separate track
Whatever happens with Participate, there is a hard deadline in the bankruptcy case itself. The proof-of-claim bar date in the Freedom Forever Chapter 7 case is October 16, 2026, and a meeting of creditors was scheduled for September 22, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern (pv magazine USA).
That deadline is your claim against Freedom Forever, not against Participate. It covers things such as a deposit you paid for work never performed, warranty claims against the installer, and money you spent fixing Freedom Forever's work. Filing costs nothing, and Official Form B410 is published by the federal courts (uscourts.gov), with filing procedures on the Delaware bankruptcy court's claims information page.
Be realistic about the recovery. Freedom Forever reported assets between $100 million and $500 million against more than $500 million in debt, with more than 50,000 unsecured creditors, and roughly 150,000 homeowners had its systems. Unsecured homeowner claims sit near the back of that line, and many will recover little or nothing. Filing is a free option that expires on October 16, not a payday. The full walkthrough is in our guide to the Freedom Forever Chapter 7 liquidation.
Two cautions worth stating plainly. Signing a proof of claim that overstates your losses carries real penalties under 11 U.S.C. sections 152 and 3571, up to $500,000 and five years. And filing a claim against Freedom Forever does not reduce, offset, or cancel what you owe Participate. Those are separate books.
Documents to gather before you call
The single biggest predictor of how a call with a servicer goes is whether you have your paperwork in front of you. Collect these into one folder, digital or physical:
- Your Participate on-bill tariff agreement or prepaid lease with Participate, including every page, exhibit, and signature page
- Your installation contract or purchase agreement with Freedom Forever, with the total system price and equipment list
- Every payment record: statements, autopay confirmations, canceled checks, and any deposit receipt
- The equipment list with panel, inverter, and battery model and serial numbers
- All permit documents, inspection records, and the interconnection or permission-to-operate paperwork if you ever received it
- Utility bills for twelve months before the install and every month since, which is how you prove the system is not producing
- Any production or monitoring data or screenshots you can pull, though Participate publishes no homeowner portal or app
- Every text message, email, and voicemail from Freedom Forever sales representatives, especially anything about savings, bill elimination, tax credits, or rebates
- Any UCC-1 financing statement or county fixture filing recorded against your property, obtainable from your county recorder
- Photographs of the installation as it stands today, including any damage or unfinished work
- A written timeline: signing date, install dates, who said what, and every call you have made since
- Anything you received about the bankruptcy, including notices from the trustee or claims agent
Start the timeline today even if it is incomplete. Memory fades fast, and a contemporaneous log written as things happen carries far more weight than one reconstructed a year later.
How Solar Exit Group helps
We are not a law firm, we do not give legal advice, and we cannot file a proof of claim for you. What we do is assemble the case file. For a homeowner with a Freedom Forever install and Participate financing, that means pulling together the Participate agreement, the installation contract, the UCC filings and county records, production data, utility bills, permit and interconnection paperwork, and the sales communications, and organizing them into a package a consumer-protection attorney can evaluate quickly.
Then, where the file supports it, we refer it to a partner law firm licensed in your state. The review is free, there is no upfront cost, and there is no guaranteed outcome. Plenty of files turn out not to support a claim, and we will tell you that rather than sell you something.
We are not affiliated with Participate, with Freedom Forever, with the Chapter 7 trustee, or with any court. If you are looking for the fastest path to a working system, call Participate directly at (844) 288-4523, the number published in its terms of use, alongside support@participate.energy before you call anyone else, including us.
FAQ
No. Participate.Energy LLC is a separate company and is not in bankruptcy. Your agreement remains enforceable.
The only number published on Participate's own website is (844) 288-4523, which appears in its terms of use rather than on a dedicated support page, along with support@participate.energy. Because the phone path is thin, send an email as well so your request exists in writing.
The charge is collected through your utility bill rather than as a separate lender payment, and the agreement runs 25 years. That means the consequences of nonpayment may involve your utility account rather than only your credit report, which is a materially different risk. Do not change your payment behavior without having the agreement reviewed.
Participate's model charges you for the energy the system produces, so a system that never received permission to operate produces nothing. Put that question in writing to support@participate.energy, ask what the charges are based on, and request the production data supporting them.
Participate markets its systems as involving "no property lien," and that is the only statement on the subject on its website. It does not address UCC-1 or county fixture filings on the equipment. Search your county recorder's records for your address and ask the company in writing.
None is named or linked on Participate's website. If you have monitoring access, it was most likely set up by Freedom Forever through the equipment manufacturer's app, so find those credentials and take screenshots of your production history while you still can.
No. As of September 11, 2026, no statement appears on its homepage, prepaid lease page, or terms of use. Its About Us page was unreachable when reviewed.
Ask for the buyout or early termination figure in writing, along with the contract provision it comes from. Exiting a long third-party-ownership agreement is usually expensive, and the number is the starting point for any honest conversation about options.
Get a free case review
If Freedom Forever installed your system, the work was never finished or never performed as promised, and Participate still expects payment, Solar Exit Group can help you organize your documents into a clear case file, at no upfront cost, with no obligation and no guaranteed outcome.
Call 833-765-2711 or email info@solarexitgrp.com.
Not legal advice. Solar Exit Group is not a law firm. We do not represent homeowners in bankruptcy proceedings and cannot file a proof of claim for you.
Sources
Participate Energy's own published information
- Participate Energy homepage
https://participate.energy/ - Participate Energy, Prepaid Lease
https://participate.energy/prepaid-lease/ - Participate.Energy LLC terms of use, containing the published phone, email, and address
https://participate.energy/terms-of-use/ - Participate.Energy LLC privacy policy
https://participate.energy/privacy-policy/
Freedom Forever Chapter 7 case and the stay-relief order
- pv magazine USA, Freedom Forever bankruptcy converted to Chapter 7 liquidation, key dates set
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/09/09/freedom-forever-bankruptcy-converted-to-chapter-7-liquidation-key-dates-set/ - pv magazine USA, Freedom Forever files Chapter 11 bankruptcy (April 15, 2026)
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/04/15/residential-solar-company-freedom-forever-files-chapter-11-bankruptcy/ - U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware, claims information
https://www.deb.uscourts.gov/claims-information - Official Form B410, Proof of Claim, U.S. Courts
https://www.uscourts.gov/forms/proof-claim/proof-claim - PV Tech, Freedom Forever files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (creditor and debt figures)
https://www.pv-tech.org/freedom-forever-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy/ - Solar Power World, What homeowners should do after Freedom Forever filed for bankruptcy
https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2026/06/what-homeowners-should-do-after-freedom-forever-filed-for-bankruptcy/
Regulatory record and a name-confusion caution
- Texas Attorney General, solar fraud initiative, which does not name Participate
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-launches-major-initiative-combat-widespread-fraud-companies-selling - Minnesota Attorney General, solar lending lawsuit, which does not name Participate
https://www.ag.state.mn.us/Office/Communications/2024/03/08_SolarLending.asp - BBB profile for the unrelated Participant Energy California Inc.
https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/berkeley/profile/solar-energy-parts/participant-energy-california-inc-1116-875931
Consumer-protection background
- FTC Holder in Due Course Rule, 16 CFR Part 433
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-433 - CFPB Issue Spotlight, Solar Financing
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/research-reports/issue-spotlight-solar-financing/ - CFPB Consumer Complaint Database
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/consumer-complaints/
Bankruptcy deadlines, trustee assignments, and procedures can be changed by court order at any time. Dates on this page reflect public reporting as of September 11, 2026 and should be verified against the docket in In re Freedom Forever LLC, No. 26-10522 (Bankr. D. Del.) before you rely on them. Company phone numbers, portal addresses, and policies change; confirm them on Participate's own website. Any regulatory matter described here reflects allegations and public filings only, and nothing on this page describes a finding of liability against Participate unless expressly stated. Solar Exit Group is not a law firm, does not provide legal advice, and cannot file a proof of claim on your behalf.