Michigan HOAs missed a solar-policy deadline most of them had the wrong date for
Michigan HOAs missed a solar-policy deadline most of them had the wrong date for
2026-09-12 · Michigan · Compliance
What happened. The deadline for every Michigan homeowners association to adopt a written solar energy policy statement passed on 2 April 2026. It was set by section 9 of the Homeowners' Energy Policy Act, 2024 PA 68, which requires each association to adopt one “within 1 year after the effective date of this act.”1 Five months on, an association that never adopted one is out of compliance — and the statute supplies its own consequence.
The date itself is the first thing to get right
Most Michigan practitioner alerts and management-company briefings put the deadline at 1 April 2026. The Michigan Legislature's own compiled-law history line for every section of the act reads “2024, Act 68, Eff. Apr. 2, 2025”.2 One year after 2 April 2025 is 2 April 2026, not 1 April.
The one-day gap is trivial in most circumstances and not trivial in one: an association that adopted its policy on 2 April 2026 is being told by the prevailing secondary commentary that it was a day late, when the statute says it was on time. The official history line is the record.
What the act actually required
Section 9 does not merely say “adopt a policy.” It prescribes what the policy must contain and forbids most of what an association would instinctively put in one. A compliant policy:
- must set out the standards the association will enforce, and those standards must come from the act itself;
- may not prohibit elements of a solar energy system from being installed on a roof face;
- may not require a specific technology — the statute names the trap directly, “including, but not limited to, solar shingles rather than traditional solar panels”;
- may not impose standards that reduce the system's estimated annual electrical production by more than 10% or raise the member's total installation cost by more than $1,000.00.
It must also state affirmatively that the association will not inquire into a member's energy usage, impose conditions impairing the system's operation, void an industry-standard warranty, require post-installation reporting, charge a higher application fee than it charges for other property-change applications, or bar a member from resubmitting after a denial. And it must state that adjacent-owner approval is not required.
The penalty is self-executing, and that is the unusual part
Most compliance deadlines in association law are enforced by somebody — a regulator, a court, an aggrieved owner with a cause of action. This one is enforced by the absence of the association.
Section 11 sets the decision clock: an association has 30 days from a written application to approve or deny, or 120 days where the application arrived before the association adopted its policy. Then subsection (3): if the association missed the policy deadline or misses the decision clock, the member may proceed with the installation and the association “shall not impose fines or otherwise penalize the member.”
So the association that did nothing has not merely failed to file paperwork. It has forfeited, for the time being, the aesthetic controls the act otherwise preserved for it — the six-inch roof projection limit, the roof-slope conformity rule, the silver/bronze/black colour requirement for framing and visible conduit. Those live inside the policy. No policy, no standards to enforce.
What a board that missed it should do now
Nothing in the act says the power to adopt expires. A late policy is still a policy, and it governs applications received after adoption. The practical questions are about the gap:
- Applications already pending. Any application submitted before adoption runs on the 120-day clock, not 30. Boards that have been sitting on submissions while “waiting for guidance” should check those dates first.
- Installations already completed in the gap. Section 11(3) removes the penalty, not the standards going forward. An association has no realistic route to fine or force removal of a system installed while it had no policy.
- Denials issued before 2 April 2025. The act lets a member resubmit an application denied before its effective date, and requires the association to reevaluate under the new law. Old denial files are not closed files.
- Application fees. If the association charges a solar-specific fee above its general property-change fee, that provision is invalid whether or not a policy exists.
The enforcement mechanism nobody is watching
There is no Michigan agency that checks. LARA has no authority to take or enforce complaints about association conduct, and the Attorney General has issued no formal opinion touching associations since 2019. Compliance here is enforced entirely by MCL 559.315, which lets a member sue for damages and awards reasonable attorney fees and costs to a prevailing member.
That is a meaningful asymmetry. The fee-shift runs one way. An association that wins pays its own lawyer; an association that loses pays both. On a dispute whose merits turn on whether the board adopted a document it was required to adopt eighteen months ago, that is not a comfortable posture.
What to watch next
Two things. First, whether any Michigan court publishes the first decision construing the act — as of early 2026 there were none, which is why so much of the practitioner commentary reads as prediction rather than law. Second, House Bill 4363, the outright repeal bill, which has been shuffled between committees twice without a hearing.
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