Indiana HOA Solar Panels: The 65% Petition That Beats an Anti-Solar Covenant

Indiana's solar provision is Chapter 3.5 of the homeowners association article, added by P.L.73-2022 and applicable to systems approved or installed on or after March 14, 2022. It is deliberately weaker than the covenant voiding statutes some states passed. Nothing in the chapter declares an anti-solar covenant unenforceable, and a recorded restriction that prohibits, restricts or limits solar installations stays on the books. What IC 32-25.5-3.5-4 supplies is a route around that covenant which the board is forbidden to block once the owner walks it correctly.

The chapter is narrow about equipment. IC 32-25.5-3.5-3 defines a solar energy system as a solar photovoltaic device whose primary purpose is to use solar energy to produce electricity. A solar water heater, a solar pool heater and a passive heat retaining structure are all outside it; Indiana handles the last of those separately as a passive solar energy system in the solar easement chapter at IC 32-23-4-1, which is about buying an easement from a neighbor for sun exposure and has nothing to do with association approval. Dwelling unit borrows the landlord tenant definition at IC 32-31-5-3, which reaches a single or two family dwelling, an apartment unit, a boarding or rooming house unit, and a manufactured home or mobile structure together with the space it occupies.

IC 32-25.5-3.5-1 grandfathers what was already settled: the chapter does not apply to a solar energy system that was approved by the association, or installed on a member's dwelling unit or property, before March 14, 2022. An array older than that date lives or dies on the covenants and whatever approval the association gave at the time.

Which associations this reaches is the trap. Chapter 3.5 sits inside IC 32-25.5, and that article's applicability section, IC 32-25.5-1-1(a), covers a homeowners association established after June 30, 2009 that is authorized to impose mandatory dues. An association established before July 1, 2009 is governed by the article only if a majority of members, or the number its own governing documents require, elects to be. Subsection (b) then names the provisions that bind every Indiana association whether or not it made that election, including the proxy rules, the amendment rules, the fine schedule section and the grievance chapter. Chapter 3.5 is not on that list. Owners in an older subdivision that never opted in have no statutory petition right. The Condominium Act at IC 32-25 contains no solar provision whatsoever, so a condominium association's declaration governs a unit owner's panels outright. Contrast the 2026 flag statute at IC 32-21-13.5-4, which expressly names condominium and cooperative associations, to see how differently the legislature drew the two.

The petition mechanics are spelled out. IC 32-25.5-3.5-4(a) opens the route to a member whose governing documents prohibit, restrict or limit solar installations, and separately to a member whose board or architectural committee denied a request for a reason not set forth in section 5. If the denial rested on a section 5 ground, the petition is not available. Subsection (b) requires the petitioning owner to give the other members the site plan, including the property boundaries, a description of the dwelling unit, the color of the system and any screening if the array will not sit on the roof, plus the vendor and the installer, plus the plans and specifications if other members request them. Subsection (c) sets the count at the lesser of the association's own amendment threshold or 65% of the members, and preserves any governing document provision that weights votes by the number of lots a member owns. Because IC 32-25.5-3-9 forbids governing documents from requiring the consent of more than two-thirds of owners to amend, and that cap binds every Indiana association, 65% is the operative number in an association at the two-thirds ceiling, while an association whose documents allow amendment by simple majority effectively drops the petition to a simple majority.

Once the signatures are in, IC 32-25.5-3.5-5 is the only remaining door, and it lists ten grounds. Two of them require a court, not a board: a court must have found that the system threatens public health or safety, or that it violates a law. Three concern who owns or maintains the surface: the system sits on property owned or maintained by the association, on property owned in common by the members, or on a roof the homeowner owns but the association maintains. Two concern location: the array is somewhere other than the roof of the owner's dwelling unit, the roof of another structure the association approved, or a fenced yard or patio the owner owns and maintains; and an array placed in a fenced yard or patio instead of on a roof may not stand taller than the fence line. One ground bundles the appearance rules for a roof mounted array, which may not extend above or beyond the roof by more than six inches, must conform to the slope of the roof with a top edge parallel to the roof line, and must keep any frame, support bracket or visible piping or wiring in a silver, bronze or black tone commonly available in the marketplace. The last two are about the owner's own conduct: an installation performed in a manner that voids material warranties, and an installation that differs significantly from what the owner presented to the board or architectural committee.

The practical reading is to design the array into section 5 before circulating the petition. A roof mounted system flush to the slope, projecting no more than six inches, with black or bronze rails and concealed wiring, on a roof the owner both owns and maintains, installed exactly as drawn on the site plan the members signed off on, leaves the association no listed ground to stand on.

5 carries no penalty of its own, so an association that objects to a panel has to reach for the general enforcement tools. 5-3-12, which requires the board to have first adopted a schedule of fines identifying the covenant violations subject to a fine, the amount for each, whether a fine recurs and how it is calculated, and a maximum aggregate amount for any single violation, with recurring fines capped at that stated maximum. 5-5, which binds every Indiana homeowners association including pre 2009 associations that never elected into the rest of the article.

5-5-9 bars a claimant from filing suit before completing the chapter. 5-5-10 requires a written notice of claim stating the nature of the claim with date, time, location and persons involved, the governing document provision it arises from, what the owner wants done, the respondent's right to request a meeting within ten business days of the notice, and who to contact. 5-5-11 requires the parties to meet in person and negotiate in good faith with full access to the property for inspection and for any corrective work.

5-5-12 to demand mediation or binding arbitration, at the demanding party's expense for the mediator or arbitrator. 5-5-13 open the courthouse. 5-4-2 caps the civil penalty at five hundred dollars per action.