North Carolina HOA Solar Collector Restrictions

S. 22B-20 sits in Chapter 22B, Contracts Against Public Policy, not the Planned Community Act, so it reaches deed restrictions and covenants generally, not only HOA declarations under Chapter 47F. Subsection (a) states the General Assembly's intent: encourage solar development and stop restrictions that would push the cost of owning and maintaining a home beyond what most owners can afford. Subsection (b) is the operative rule: except as allowed by subsection (d), any deed restriction, covenant, or similar binding agreement running with the land that prohibits, or has the effect of prohibiting, a solar collector used for water heating, active space heating and cooling, passive heating, or generating electricity on residential property is void and unenforceable.

"Residential property" means property whose predominant use is residential; it excludes condominiums created under Chapter 47A or 47C located in a multi-story building where units have horizontal boundaries described in the declaration, so stacked-unit condo owners fall outside the protection. Subsection (c) still lets an association regulate the location or screening of a collector, as long as the rule does not prevent the collector's reasonable use. Where the association handles exterior maintenance, a recorded covenant may shift installation, existence, and removal damages onto the owner, require the owner to indemnify the association, and relieve the association of maintenance, repair, replacement, or removal duties unless a separate written agreement recorded with the county register of deeds says otherwise.

Subsection (d) is the major carve-out: a covenant may still prohibit a collector visible from ground level on a facade facing a common or public area, on a roof surface sloping down toward that same area, or within the zone bounded by lines drawn across the facade to the lot's side boundaries; this street-visibility exception reaches further than the equivalent carve-out in most other states' solar-access laws. Subsection (e) lets a court award costs and reasonable attorneys' fees to the prevailing party in a civil action brought under the section. The statute traces to Session Laws 2007-279, s. 3, and 2009-553, s. 3.

An HOA that fines a homeowner, or takes formal action, over a collector placed outside the visibility carve-out in subsection (d) is enforcing a covenant the statute already voids, and the homeowner can challenge that in civil court. Because subsection (e) lets the judge award costs and reasonable attorneys' fees to whichever side prevails, an association that loses over an improperly restricted collector can end up covering the homeowner's legal bill, and a homeowner who sues without a real violation risks paying the association's fees instead.