Texas solar installer marketing that matches the state's disclosure form

Anyone you pay to sell solar in Texas now needs a state registration, and so does your company. Buyers are told to look those numbers up, so they belong in your marketing.

Since September 1, 2026, a company that pays people to sell or lease home solar needs a solar retailer registration. It comes from TDLR, the state's licensing department. Each of those people needs a solar salesperson registration.

TDLR opened applications on August 10, 2026. The install is a separate matter. Only a licensed electrical contractor may put the system on the roof, under the state's solar sales law.

Who needs what:

• A solar retailer registers, carries the insurance TDLR's rules set and must supervise every rep it authorizes. It answers for the violations it knew of or reasonably should have caught, under the law's supervision rule.
• An electrical contractor selling through its own staff skips registration and insurance, says TDLR's knowledge base. Its contracts still carry the required terms and the five-day cancel. An outside sales rep it hires has to register.
• A salesperson may sell for more than one retailer, which TDLR confirms on the same page.

Every contract prints the retailer's and the salesperson's names and registration numbers. It must also name the installing electrical contractor plainly, with its license number or a list to choose from, as the law's contract section requires. TDLR's own brochure tells homeowners to check the license search before they choose a retailer. So put the numbers on the quote page and the rep's leave-behind too.

Some sales sit outside the law: new home construction, commercial roofs, buildings of more than four units or stories, and systems under one kilowatt. Storage-only sales may as well. TDLR wrote that regulating them would likely take a change in the law. It said so in its responses to comments, printed with the adopted rules in the June 26, 2026 Texas Register.

A court can fine a seller as much as $2,500 for each violation and $50,000 for similar violations combined, under the law's penalty section. Those caps rise to $10,000 and $100,000 under SB 1036 when the court finds a person over 65 was harmed.

TDLR can also issue its own fines. After a hearing, it can order a contract canceled and refunded. This is a summary, not legal advice. Confirm with counsel how the law reads for your own sales model.

Every Texas buyer now signs a state form that spells out the real cost of the deal. If an ad says something the form does not, the buyer sees it at the kitchen table.

Before a homeowner signs, the salesperson fills in TDLR's Consumer Disclosure Statement, and both of them sign it. These are the lines your ads get compared with:

• the total payment obligation, counting every loan payment for the full term
• how the buyer pays: cash, loan or lease, with power purchase agreements, prepaid PPAs and energy service agreements also on the list
• an itemized cost list. TDLR's knowledge base says it must break out the cash cost, battery and labor, plus the warranty, seller's points and dealer fees
• estimated peak kilowatts and average monthly kilowatt-hours
• the buyback or charge rate on line 15, if the system connects to the grid
• who gets HOA approval, whether there is an arbitration clause, and whether the agreement transfers when the house sells
• who pays to take the panels off and put them back for a roof repair

The form's terms become part of the contract. A buyer who is 65 or older, or not fluent in English, gets a printed copy. Both points come from TDLR's disclosure rule, published in March 2026 and adopted without changes.

The form goes in the buyer's preferred language when TDLR offers one. TDLR publishes it in Spanish.

For marketing, that becomes three checks. A monthly payment in an ad has to reconcile with the total on the form. A savings figure has to come from the same kilowatt-hour estimate and buyback rate the rep will write in. A page promising "no hidden fees" has to survive an itemized cost list.

We would also post a blank copy of the form on your pricing page. It tells a cautious buyer you expect to be compared, and it costs nothing. Where your own contract and the form seem to disagree, settle which one controls with counsel before the ad changes.

There is no single Texas savings number to put in an ad. What a buyer saves depends on who buys back the extra power the panels make, and at what price.

Texas has no statewide net metering. In the parts of the state with retail choice, the homeowner sells surplus power to the retail electric provider serving the house. The price is "a value agreed to" between the two, under the state's interconnection law. That value can be a time-of-day market price or a bill credit that rolls forward. So it differs from one plan to the next.

Austin shows the contrast. Austin Energy, a department of the City of Austin, buys every kilowatt-hour a home system produces at its Value of Solar rate. That rate was 12.89 cents on its October 2026 page. Austin Energy bills the household for everything it uses and carries extra credit from month to month. A Houston buyer on a market buyback plan and an Austin buyer on that rate can own identical systems and see different bills.

The contract also has to say who gets approval to connect the system to the grid, and from whom. That is the electric utility, or the co-op or city utility that serves the home, under the law's contract section.

Summer is when buyers run the numbers. EIA's September 2026 outlook put the average June-to-August home electric bill at $226 a month in the West South Central region, up 6.8% on 2025. That region includes Texas.

So write one savings page per territory. Give the buyback terms in plain words, the date you last checked them and the assumptions behind the estimate. Check the tax line in those assumptions too: name the credit it means and who can claim it. Keep an Austin customer's bill story on the Austin page.

Customer stories need the same care. The FTC's Endorsement Guides read a customer's savings as a claim about what a typical buyer will get. They also say "results not typical" does not fix that. Whether a particular buyback plan supports a particular savings claim is a fair question for counsel.

Door crews and phone lists are where Texas solar outreach meets the most state rules. Check each channel against the rules below before a crew knocks or a list gets a text.

At the door. A posted no-soliciting sign ends the visit unless someone who lives there invites the rep in. That rule is in the solar sales law as well as TDLR's rulebook. Many cities run their own solicitor permits, and our Texas roofing page lists several in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Where a city ordinance on the same conduct conflicts with the solar law, the solar law wins, under its conflicts section. It also wins over the state's home solicitation chapter. The solar law's own cancel window is five business days. Whether your city's solicitor permit still applies to solar reps is a question for counsel.

Texts. Sales texts came under the Texas telephone solicitation law on September 1, 2025, when SB 140 took effect.

Texts sent with the consumer's prior consent need no telephone solicitation registration, says the Secretary of State's FAQ.

The state also exempts two kinds of message to people you already know. One is a repair or maintenance offer on a system you sold. The other is a pitch to current or former customers, once the business has traded under the same name for two years. A cold list fits neither.

Calls. Bought solar leads carry the most risk. A homeowner can sue in a Texas court over a call or text that breaks the federal TCPA. They can recover $500 a violation, or up to $1,500 when it was knowing, under the state's TCPA lawsuit rule. Ask every lead seller for the consent record behind each number. Have counsel sort each list into its lane before the first send.