The most important thing to understand: you almost certainly have THREE separate warranties, and only one of them died.
When your installer disappears, the instinct is to assume all your protection went with them. It didn't. A residential solar system carries three separate warranties, and they have very different fates when an installer folds:
Your panels, and especially your inverters or microinverters, carry warranties from the manufacturer, Enphase, SolarEdge, Qcells, and others, not from your installer. Microinverters and optimizers commonly carry 25-year terms. These survive your installer's bankruptcy completely. The catch: someone has to diagnose the failure, assemble the paperwork (serial numbers, install dates, error logs, production data), and file the claim correctly. That's the part homeowners get stuck on, and it's the core of what SolCare does.
Panel manufacturers guarantee output stays above a floor (typically ~80% of original output at year 25). Also a manufacturer promise; also survives.
The installer's own promise covering installation quality, wiring, mounting, roof penetrations. When the installer goes under, this warranty effectively goes with them. This is the real gap, and it's the gap SolCare's service plans exist to fill: monitoring that catches problems early, diagnostics that identify whether an issue is equipment (covered) or installation (ours to fix at honest rates), and covered service labor on our top plan.
Manufacturer warranties have claim windows, some require claims within a set period of discovering a defect. Sitting on a known problem can jeopardize an otherwise valid claim. If you suspect something's wrong, the clock may already be running. A free health check tells you where you stand.