Utilities Disputes just handed SolarZero customers a powerful new precedent

One customer, one precedent

Andy Gray signed up to a 20-year SolarZero lease expecting savings. He ended up fighting to get out. When he asked to exit and have the solar equipment removed, SolarZero quoted him $16,000. Gray estimated that staying in for the remaining 15 years could cost him an unnecessary $50,000.

On 5 August 2026, Newsroom reported that Utilities Disputes commissioner Neil Mallon recommended Gray be allowed to exit for $4,794, roughly 30 percent of the original figure. It is the first publicly reported decision to substantially cut a SolarZero exit fee, and it lands in the middle of a much larger regulatory storm around the collapsed provider.

How a savings pitch became a liability

SolarZero sold residential and small-business customers solar and battery systems on a 20-year lease. The promise was locked-in pricing, surplus power exported to the grid, and lower bills. It built up around 15,000 customers before going into liquidation in late 2024. The contracts were transferred to Verofi, operating through SZ Servicing.

Once the original company was gone, the pricing protections customers thought they had bought evaporated. What was marketed as a savings tool became, in the words of multiple customers, “a liability”.

The bill shock is real

The numbers are brutal. At least one customer copped a 225 percent overnight increase in peak-time rates three years in, with rates jumping from 8 cents to 26 cents per kWh and a fixed fee of $160 plus GST charged before a single unit of power was used. Another customer and his wife were paying $400 a month despite living alone.

The wider market piled on. Lines charges rose an average 20 percent nationally on 1 April 2025, and for customers who had already lost price protection the compounding was severe. One customer’s bill jumped from $124.11 in February 2025 to $503.34 in March 2025, a more than 300 percent rise in a single month.

The exit trap

Leaving was designed to be uneconomic. Exit quotes ran up to $30,000. In June 2025, Newsroom reported one anonymous customer facing close to $26,000 to pay out the remainder, having been told moving the system to a new home was not a practical option. The headline said it all: “Everyone wants out.” Selling a house with a SolarZero contract attached has become a complication in itself, with buyers reluctant to inherit the deal.

The regulators are circling

In October 2025 the Commerce Commission opened a preliminary investigation into SolarZero and SZ Servicing after 162 complaints alleging Fair Trading Act breaches. In October 2025 Vanessa Horne, the commission’s general manager of competition, fair trading and credit, said the watchdog was in the assessment phase and had made initial contact with the liquidator. By May 2026 it was warning of “gaps” in the protection frameworks covering this class of long-term energy agreement.

The complaint data is damning. SolarZero accounted for 20.8 percent of accepted deadlocked complaints at Utilities Disputes despite holding just 0.5 percent of the electricity market. Solar complaints overall rose 105 percent to 440.

Why businesses should read this carefully

SolarZero was mostly a residential product, but the contract architecture is not. Long-term leases, pricing-change mechanisms buried in the terms, exit fees calculated as a multiple of remaining value, and complications on property transfer are structurally identical to what is now pitched to businesses under solar-as-a-service, battery storage, and managed-energy deals.

Gray’s case surfaces the questions every business signing one should ask. What happens to pricing protections if the provider is sold, restructured, or liquidated? How is the exit fee calculated, and what is the worst-case number? Can the deal be transferred if you move premises or sell the business? And what dispute resolution mechanism applies?

The encouraging part is that a fee cut from $16,000 to $4,794 shows disproportionate exit charges can be challenged. The uncomfortable part is that it required lodging a formal dispute, waiting for a ruling, and staying in a bad contract in the meantime. Most businesses would rather not be in that position at all.

What happens next

The open question is whether SZ Servicing and Verofi apply the Gray logic across their 15,000 customers, or whether each must fight the same battle individually. The Commerce Commission investigation has not been publicly resolved. Until the protection frameworks catch up with the products, the smartest defence is at the point of signing, not the point of exit.

Sources

• Disputes body steps in as SolarZero customer fights $16,000 contract exit fee (2026-08-05)
• ‘Liability’: Angry customers complain about SolarZero contracts (2026-07-14)
• Angry customers complain about SolarZero contracts (2026-07-14)
• Watchdog warns of ‘gaps’ in protection as SolarZero complaints mount (2026-05-01)
• SolarZero customers trapped with high fees: ‘Everyone wants out’ (2025-06-04)
• SolarZero customer contracts vanish into thin air as they grapple with rising bills (2025-09-12)
• Commerce Commission investigating SolarZero for abandoning customers (2025-10-31)