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Minnesota now has a state law that stops homeowners associations from banning solar panels outright. Here’s what it actually covers, and what your HOA can still require.
Minnesota passed a law that stops homeowners associations from banning solar panels outright. If you live in an HOA-governed neighborhood and you’ve been told no — or you’re worried you will be — here’s what the law actually covers, and what your HOA can still control.
No. Under this law, your HOA can’t flatly refuse to let you install solar panels on your home.
Before this law, plenty of Minnesota HOA covenants included blanket bans on solar panels, or approval processes vague enough that a board could deny a request for almost any reason. Those outright bans no longer hold up. If your HOA’s governing documents say solar isn’t allowed, period, that provision doesn’t apply anymore — homeowners have a legal right to install a system.
Minnesota joins a number of other states that have passed similar solar-access laws limiting how far an HOA can go in blocking panels purely on aesthetic grounds. The idea is the same everywhere: an HOA can regulate how solar looks on a roof, but it can’t decide homeowners aren’t allowed to have it at all.
The law isn’t a free-for-all. HOAs can still set reasonable rules about how panels go in — things like requiring them to be mounted flush with the roofline, limiting placement to less visible roof planes when that doesn’t hurt production, and reviewing wiring and conduit runs so they’re not an eyesore. What they generally can’t do is set rules so strict they make solar impractical or unreasonably expensive, or reject a system just because a board member doesn’t care for how it looks.
If you asked about solar before and got turned down, it’s worth asking again. A denial based on an old blanket ban in your HOA’s covenants isn’t enforceable anymore. Bring the request back to your board and point them to the current law — most boards will update their rules once they know an outright ban no longer applies.
Bottom line: your HOA can still have a say in how a system looks on your roof — placement, wiring, mounting — but it can’t tell you no altogether. That’s the part worth knowing before you bring a proposal to your board.
If you’re in an HOA that previously turned down solar and you’d like to see what’s possible on your roof now, send us your details here for a free, no-obligation design. Or if you just want to see the numbers first, run your address through the iSolar Calculator here to see what you could save.
Talk to a local iSolar expert — free, no pressure. Call (651) 565-1140.