Oregon's plug-in solar bill would have left HOAs two defenses
Oregon's plug-in solar bill would have left HOAs two defenses
2026-09-15 · Oregon · Legislation · Did not pass
A 2026 bill would have stripped Oregon planned communities of any aesthetic or architectural objection to plug-in solar panels, leaving exactly two grounds for refusal. House Bill 4080 died in the House Committee on Climate, Energy, and Environment at sine die on March 6, 2026, without a vote of any kind.1
The planned-community provision
Section 5 would have added a new ORS 94.779(7):
“A provision in a planned community's governing document that restricts or prohibits the installation or use of a portable solar photovoltaic energy device, as defined in section 2 of this 2026 Act, is void and unenforceable, unless the installation or use of the device would: (a) Violate building codes or state or federal law; or (b) Violate the device manufacturer's written safety guidelines for the device.”2
Two defences. Building code, and the manufacturer's safety sheet. No aesthetic standard, no architectural review, no placement condition — a markedly harder rule than ORS 94.778 applies to conventional rooftop solar, which expressly preserves “reasonable size, placement or aesthetic requirements.”
Condominiums would have had more room
Section 6's parallel ORS 100.023(7) carried a much longer list of exceptions: violation of codes or law; violation of manufacturer safety guidelines; interference with the common elements; electrical capacity or amperage the building, unit or circuit cannot accommodate. And for a device in an exterior area: where the area is a required egress; where the device would interfere with securing a door or window accessible from outside; where installation “requires the use of brackets or other hardware that would damage or void the warranty of the door or window or frame, puncture the envelope of the building or otherwise cause significant damages”; or where restrictions require installation “in a manner that prevents risk of falling.”
And it would have been retroactive
Section 7(2) and (3) applied both amendments “to provisions in governing documents adopted before, on or after the effective date of this 2026 Act” — the same total-retroactivity formula the Legislature did enact in Senate Bill 1551 three weeks earlier.
What a portable device is
Section 2(1)(b) defined it tightly: moveable; primary purpose of collecting solar energy and generating electricity by photovoltaic effect; maximum generating capacity of 1,200 watts or less; designed to connect through a standard 120-volt AC outlet; carrying a safety feature preventing it from energising the building during a power outage; and listed by Underwriters Laboratories or an equivalent nationally recognised testing laboratory.
The amendment that removed the HOA provisions entirely
The only version teed up for a committee vote had already been stripped of everything that touched associations. The -4 staff measure summary, under “Effect of Amendment”:
“-4 The amendment modifies actions a retail electricity consumer must take prior to installing a portable solar device and removes sections 3 through 9 in the base bill.”3
Sections 3 through 9 include section 5 (ORS 94.779), section 6 (ORS 100.023) and the whole landlord limb. Even if House Bill 4080 had passed in that form, Oregon association law would not have changed.
Who actually opposed it
Ninety-eight testimony submissions were filed — 88 in support, 10 in opposition — and not one came from a homeowners association or a community-association group.
The opponents were the fire service and the electrical trades: the Oregon Fire Marshal's Association; the Oregon Fire Chiefs Association and the Fire/EMS Chapter of the Special Districts Association of Oregon; the Oregon State Fire Fighters Council; IBEW Local 48; IBEW Local 932; the Oregon Chapters of the National Electrical Contractors Association; Multifamily NW, the landlord trade group, opposing the tenant limb; and three individuals.
Supporters included Solar Oregon, PDX Solar, 350PDX, the ZERO Coalition, the Oregon Solar and Storage Industries Association, Climate Solutions, Rogue Climate, Electrify Oregon, the Springfield Eugene Tenant Association, Bright Saver, and the City of Portland, alongside roughly eighty individual residents — thirty from Eugene, twenty-three from Portland.
The Community Associations Institute's Oregon committee recorded the bill as monitored rather than opposed, and says it would have sought an amendment “to explicitly allow for associations to establish reasonable restrictions related to the use of solar panels.” It never had to file one.
A correction worth making
House Bill 4080 is widely described — including in at least one association-sector session report — as a bill that addressed irrigation requirements in governing documents during drought conditions. That is a misreading of the bill document, and it is worth being precise about.
When an Oregon bill amends an ORS section, the entire section is reprinted, with new matter in boldface and deleted matter in bracketed italics. House Bill 4080 amended ORS 94.779 and ORS 100.023, so both sections appear in the bill in full — including the drought, irrigation and xeriscape subsections. Those subsections are reprinted unchanged. They are existing Oregon law, not a proposal, and they remain in force today. The only thing House Bill 4080 would have added to either statute was a single new subsection on portable solar.
The practical consequence: nothing about Oregon's drought-irrigation rules depended on this bill, and nothing about them changed when it died. Our Oregon water conservation page sets out what ORS 94.779 actually does.
Where it came from
The staff measure summary places Oregon in an international lineage: Germany set the first technical regulations for plug-in solar in 2019, with an 800-watt cap, and in 2025 Utah's House Bill 340 became the first US state law exempting portable solar devices from interconnection-agreement requirements. Oregon's 1,200-watt threshold is above the German one.
What to watch next
The bill had 21 sponsors, including the chief sponsor Representative McDonald and Senator Neron Misslin, and drew 88 supportive submissions against 10 opposed. That is a strong base for reintroduction in 2027. What killed it was not association opposition; it was the fire service and the electrical trades objecting to a device that backfeeds a building circuit through a standard outlet. Any 2027 version will have to answer that objection first, and the association limb will ride on whatever survives.
Related Oregon HOA Topics
- HB 4080, 2026 Regular Session — measure overview, sponsors, history and testimony index, OLIS ↩
- House Bill 4080 as introduced — full text, including sections 5, 6 and 7 ↩
- HB 4080 -4 Staff Measure Summary, House Committee on Climate, Energy, and Environment ↩
- ORS 94.779, unenforceability of certain irrigation requirements — current text ↩
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