Services
What we rescue
01
The diagnosis visit
Ninety minutes with the monitoring history, the error log and an IV-curve tracer: what each string is doing, what the inverter has been complaining about and to whom, and what the array actually made against what it promised. You get the findings in writing — ours to write, yours to take to anybody.
02
Inverter surgery
String or micro, any brand, any decade: like-for-like swaps where the bus is healthy, conversions where the shade argues for micros panel by panel, and firmware, comms and meter-register settings brought current. The ghost-installer special — an inverter fault code nobody local will quote on — is our most-ordered item.
03
Panel care & re-sealing
Cracked glass triaged by the numbers, squirrel chew repaired with steel loom instead of a second apology, flashings re-sealed and re-torqued to recorded values, and the attic checked the morning after anything that touched the roof plane. Raccoon-grade wire management, because the bench has raccoons.
04
Re-monitoring & the new baseline
The production history recovered where it survives, a fresh monitoring account in your name alone, and a re-modelled baseline for the array as-found — with an honest guess at the years the ghost left on the table. The rescue ends when the app on your phone matches the roof on your house.
Bought the house in March, and the panels were decorative by April — the monitoring account belonged to a company that had stopped answering in 2019. Orphan Array had the log read, the fault named and the string back on the meter before lunch.
How the bench runs
Flat-priced honesty, on any builder’s roof
The diagnosis is a flat ninety minutes at a flat price, and the findings are yours regardless of what you do next — half our calls end with "get the original installer back, here is what to tell them," and we say it cheerfully. We do not sell arrays, which is the whole trick: a rescue shop with no new systems to push has no reason to condemn yours.
The findings leave with you
The written diagnosis — faults, curves, the menu, the prognosis — is yours to hand to any installer in the county. If the honest verdict is retirement, it says so, and the replacement quote we write names the salvage value of every working part.
How it goes
Logs to new baseline
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Day 1
The logs
Ninety minutes on site: monitoring history pulled, error log read like a chart review, IV curves traced string by string. The array tells you what is wrong with it; most installers never ask. You watch the whole thing — the bench has two chairs and a kettle.
Day 2
The report & the menu
A written diagnosis with photographs, the fault named, and a fixed-price menu behind it: fix, convert, or retire — each priced, each with its honest prognosis. The report leaves with you whether we ever see the roof again.
The fix
One visit, usually
Sixty-eight percent of calls close in a single follow-up: the part was on the van because the log said it would be. Inverter swaps run half a day; micro conversions and re-sealing run to the roof’s own schedule, dated in the work order.
Two weeks after
The new baseline
Production re-read against the as-found model, the app re-registered to your name alone, and the array’s second life documented from the day the ghost stopped answering. The file is yours; the monitoring account is yours; the roof is yours again too.
2025 — 2026, the Mills & the Bench
Rescues, re-homed
Six rescues from last season, each captioned with what was wrong and what it took — the two numbers a ghost never leaves behind.
Fair questions
Ghost-system questions
The five every inherited-roof conversation reaches by the second kettle. The bench phone answers seven to five, and walk-ins get the log reader if the kettle is on.
The installer vanished — what do I actually own?
The hardware, and more of it than you think: panels, rail, and usually an interconnection agreement with the utility that outlives the company that filed it. The monitoring account is the part that lapses, and it is re-registered to you alone in an afternoon. The diagnosis sorts owned from orphaned in ninety minutes, and the van carries the paperwork to prove which is which.
Is a 2014 system worth fixing?
Usually, and the curves decide rather than the calendar: panels degrade about half a percent a year, so a healthy 2014 array still makes roughly 93 percent of its day-one rating — worth rescuing against a replacement priced at today’s rates. The report runs both futures side by side, salvage value included, and two roofs in ten honestly get the retirement verdict instead.
Can you take over monitoring on any array?
On any array with a story to read: if the inverter platform still logs, we can pull the history, re-register the account to you and set the alerts to your phone. Pre-platform systems get a monitoring retrofit at the diagnosis price plus hardware — and even those get the production meter arithmetic, because the utility’s own data is nobody’s property.
Will you honestly tell us to replace it?
Yes, and cheerfully — we do not sell arrays, so condemnation costs us nothing and earns the only thing we trade on. The retirement verdict comes with the salvage numbers, the replacement spec and the honest months a replacement would take to catch up to a repair. Two in ten reports end that way, and both families sent us their neighbors.
What does a rescue do to the guarantee and the sale price?
Good news on both: the workmanship warranty on our rescue work is ten years regardless of who installed the original, and a re-baselined array with documentation appraises better than a mystery roof — realtors on the Bench have started listing "rescued and documented" as a feature. The file, the model and the log history transfer with the house, which is the entire point of writing them down.
Three companies looked at my dead 2016 system and quoted a full replacement, sight unseen, before noon. Orphan Array read the log in the driveway, found the ground-fault the rain had been writing about for two years, and had the string back on the meter in a morning. The invoice had line items. I nearly framed it beside the production chart.
We inherited the panels with the house and, as far as we could tell, so did the void. They re-registered the monitoring to us, explained the eleven error codes like a doctor with a good bedside manner, and fixed the four that mattered. The app now matches the roof. First time since we bought the place that the panels felt like ours.
Squirrels. Twice. The first fix was ordinary wire and a prayer; theirs was steel loom, a torque sheet and an attic check the next morning, and the little vandals have moved on to easier chemistry. The re-baselined model says the array is making 96 percent of what it promised in 2015. The bench has a kettle and two chairs, and they mean it.
Flat-priced diagnoses across the Mills & the Bench, usually within the week · (555) 031-8859 · bench@orphanarray.example
Bring us the mystery
Tell us what the system does and what anyone has guessed so far. The ninety-minute diagnosis is flat-priced, the findings are yours whoever acts on them, and the bench keeps two chairs and a kettle. bench@orphanarray.example