What it does not do, which matters more than what it does

By its terms the Covered List entry restricts importation and marketing of new equipment. It does not require removing an inverter already installed and operating, and nothing in either Public Notice reaches an existing rooftop array.

An association that reads this as authority to order a member to take a system down is wrong, and would be inviting a claim under MCL 559.315, which gives a prevailing member attorney fees and costs.

What it does do to an association's inbox

Three practical effects, over the next twelve to eighteen months:

• Owner submittals will shift toward section 45X-eligible equipment. That is a narrower set of models, with lead-time and price consequences that owners will feel and will mention.
• Approved installations may need to change equipment before they are built. A member approved in spring on one inverter may install a different one. Michigan's statute lets an association deny where the built system “does not substantially conform to the approved application” — and an inverter substitution driven by federal supply restrictions is not the kind of nonconformity that provision was written for. Treating it as one is a misreading.
• The permitted denial grounds are unchanged and exhaustive. Nothing on the Covered List is among them. A Michigan association may deny for the roof-projection, roof-slope and colour reasons in MCL 559.309, for a court finding of unlawfulness, or for nonconformity with the approved application. Equipment provenance is not on the list.

The sensible policy language

An association revising its solar policy statement this autumn can accommodate this without exceeding its statutory authority:

• Ask for the inverter make and model in the application, as an information item rather than an approval criterion.
• Provide that an equipment substitution required by regulatory or supply constraints, with equivalent physical characteristics, does not require a fresh application — which protects the owner and saves the board a decision.
• Do not add any provision conditioning approval on where equipment was manufactured. It would be void under section 5 and would sit badly next to the statutory list of permitted denial grounds.

What Michigan is not doing about any of it

The Michigan Public Service Commission is where the state's solar and EV infrastructure decisions are actually made — the Transportation Electrification Plan docket is the live one. There is no MPSC proceeding on inverter supply, and no Michigan bill addresses it. House Bill 5927 would create a statewide rooftop solar net metering programme and House Bill 5764 would regulate small portable solar devices; both sit in House Energy with no hearing.

What to watch next

Further Public Notices. Two came out in three weeks, and the second materially narrowed the first. Anyone advising a Michigan board on this should check the Covered List itself rather than a summary of it — the page records its own last-updated date.