Renters and HOAs: plug-in solar in Connecticut

There is no Connecticut statute giving a tenant the right to use a plug-in solar device. We checked for one: a case-insensitive search of the full forty-page act for "tenant", "landlord", "homeowner", "condominium", "common interest", "covenant" and "unit owner" returns no matches anywhere in it, in Section 9 or outside it.

What that means in practice is that your lease governs. The act removes a utility's ability to block a conforming device, and it removes the interconnection requirement — but it gives you nothing to point at if your landlord says no. It also does not touch the building and fire codes, which Section 9(b) expressly preserves along with "any provision of any local ordinance or regulation applicable to such devices".

This is a difference from other states rather than an oversight on our part. Colorado, New Jersey and Vermont each void restrictive covenants that would bar this equipment. Connecticut's act does not.

Public Act 26-127 does not void restrictive covenants, and it does not limit what a condominium association or a common-interest community may prohibit. The same search described above found no occurrence of "covenant", "condominium", "common interest" or "unit owner" anywhere in the act.

So if your association's rules prohibit visible equipment on a balcony, deck or railing, the act does not override them. Two features of the definition in Section 9(a) are worth knowing about before you argue the point, because they cut both ways: the device must not be "permanently affixed to a structure", which is often exactly what an association objects to, and the act does not exempt it from the State Building Code, the Fire Safety Code, the State Fire Prevention Code or any local ordinance.