The case that shows how this actually plays out

Georgia's most instructive solar decision of the period is not about solar rights at all. It is about how an architectural committee handles the application — and it went the homeowner's way.

In Kinnaird v. Morningview Homeowners Association, Inc., No. A25A1083 (Ga. Ct. App. 10 Sept. 2025), longtime Suwanee residents applied to install 33 solar panels, sited to avoid facing the street, and were denied by email at 11:23 the following morning. They sued. The trial court gave the association summary judgment on a broadly worded covenant not to sue in the declaration.³

The Court of Appeals reversed. It read the clause in the context of the sentence preceding it — which said plans are “not approved for engineering or structural design or quality of materials” — and held that this “is decidedly not the same thing as insulating the HOA or ARC from liability for all situations involving approval or disapproval of requested modifications.”

The illustration in the opinion is the useful part. Had the committee approved the panels and they proved defective or underproductive, the covenant would bar suit. “But that is not the type of lawsuit the Kinnairds filed. Indeed, the Kinnairds challenge and seek to recover damages based on how the HOA and ARC did or did not execute their duties in the approval/disapproval process.”

So: a Georgia association may still refuse solar. What it may not do is assume a covenant not to sue insulates it from having to explain how it reached the refusal.

What that leaves a Georgia homeowner

Three practical routes, in descending order of reliability.

Read the declaration first, not the marketing. Many Georgia declarations do not prohibit solar outright; they subject exterior modifications to architectural approval. That is a different problem with a different answer — it is about the application, not the covenant.

Attack the process, not the power. Under Saunders v. Thorn Woode Partnership, L.P., 265 Ga. 703 (1995), where a declaration delegates decision-making to a committee, the judicial questions are whether the exercise of authority was procedurally fair and reasonable and whether the substantive decision was made in good faith and is reasonable and not arbitrary and capricious. That standard is deferential — but it is a standard, and Kinnaird confirms an owner can litigate to it.

Amend the covenants. The slow route, and the one Act 715 marginally assists: an association that submits to the Property Owners' Association Act under the new 80% route in § 44-3-235(a)(3) has its amendment threshold capped at 80% by the amended § 44-3-226(b).

The economics are doing more work than the covenants

Worth stating, because it explains why Georgia solar-access pressure has not built the way it has elsewhere. Georgia has no statewide full-retail net metering. Georgia Power's solar buyback exports at roughly 7.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for 2026 against a retail rate near 13 cents, and the legacy programme from the 2019 rate case remains capped at 5,000 participants out of roughly 2.7 million customers, first come first served. The Public Service Commission in 2025 allowed Georgia Power to defer expanding net metering.⁴

An association denial is a barrier for the owner who has already decided to install. For most Georgia homeowners, the export rate settles the question before the architectural committee ever sees an application.

What to watch next

Whether HB 389 returns in 2027 with the compromise its opponents described. The objection on the record was not to solar; it was to removing the association's ability to apply “reasonable design, safety and placement standards.” A bill that bars outright prohibition while preserving reasonable placement review is the version that answers the stated objection — and it is the shape most states with solar-access statutes have landed on. Nobody has filed it.