Mechanics Liens Lifted in Solar Power Company Bankruptcy
About 20 Homes in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Affected
The mechanics liens filed against Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo homeowners caught up in the bankruptcy of Florida-based Electriq Power Inc. were lifted last week, Axiom 360 CEO Brandon Hoffman announced. The liens would have prevented the sale of a house until the lien amount were paid to Axiom, just one of the complications under the hood of the solar panel and battery systems marketed by Electriq Power.
When Electriq declared Chapter 7 on May 3, its contractor Axiom was in the middle of about 20 solar-and-battery installations. The Arroyo Grande–based company soon learned that its payments would be held up until the bankruptcy was resolved, so, in an effort to ensure payment, Axiom filed mechanics liens on the homes for which it had not been entirely reimbursed.
“We had to make concessions,” said Hoffman of what Axiom was owed. “More than I would have liked. Such is life.” All of Axiom’s customers had been notified of the lifting of the liens, he added.
Electriq’s assets were auctioned off in July for $4.9 million, a small amount compared to the $70 million owed to its creditors, according to its bankruptcy papers. The company’s warehouse in San Leandro, California, was full of solar panels and batteries financed by yet another Florida company, EverBright, which is a subsidiary of NextEra Energy of Juno Beach. The way the business worked, contractors placed the mini-power plants on rooftops, and EverBright would own the power generated. EverBright then billed homeowners for the energy, charging a rate competitive to the local utility’s. A number of California communities, including the cities of Santa Barbara and Goleta, had endorsed the program as a means to add solar power to homes for free.
Robert Furr, the Florida bankruptcy attorney acting as trustee for Electriq, said that the sale of the company’s assets would be finalized sometime this month. The purchaser, SEDC Solar of Washington, D.C., was taking on business operations for Electriq but was having trouble with the operating system that gathered energy generation data and ran other operations. Furr said they expected all homeowners’ systems to be up and running by this time next month.
