Who owns my solar panels? How to find the UCC fixture filing in Nevada

Your contract says who owns the panels. The public record says who has a claim on them. In Nevada, a lender or a system owner that wants its interest to reach the panels as part of the house records a fixture filing with the County Recorder; other UCC filings go to the Secretary of State. In Clark County you can search the Recorder's index yourself, as a guest, tonight.

First, what your paperwork already says

A lease or a power purchase agreement. You do not own the system. The company that does is named in the agreement. Nevada required it to tell you, in a separate disclosure of not more than 3 pages, whether it intended to file a fixture filing on the system: NRS 598.9812 paragraph (m) for a lease, and NRS 598.9818 paragraph (i) for a power purchase agreement. Find that page. It usually answers the question before you search anything.

Cash or a loan. You own the panels. A lender may still hold a security interest in them. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's August 2024 report on solar financing notes that some solar loans are secured, typically with a lien on the panels themselves, and that lenders commonly file UCC liens on them. The loan agreement says whether yours is secured.

The search below tells you whether any of that was actually put on the record, by whom, and when. It matters most at three moments: when the installer has closed and you are working out who to call, when a loan is paid off, and when you sell.

Two offices, two kinds of filing

Nevada's version of the Uniform Commercial Code decides where a filing goes.

• A fixture filing is recorded in the office designated for recording a mortgage on the real property (NRS 104.9501 subsection 1). In Clark County that is the County Recorder.
• Any other financing statement, including one covering goods that are or will become fixtures but not filed as a fixture filing, goes to the Office of the Secretary of State.

The statute defines fixtures as goods so related to particular real property that an interest in them arises under real property law. A fixture filing has to do more than an ordinary financing statement. Under NRS 104.9502 it must say it covers fixtures, say it is to be filed in the real property records, describe the real property, and name a record owner if the debtor has no interest of record. That is why it turns up in a search on your parcel.

Search both offices. A filing can be made either way.

How to search the Clark County Recorder

1. Gather the names and the parcel. Every name on the deed and on the solar contract, spelled exactly as written, the parcel number from your property tax bill, and the month the system went in.
2. Open the Recorder's Record Search System. It is linked from the Recorder's home page as Search Records Online. On 2026-09-28 it opened for a guest with no account, and offered searches by name, parcel number, instrument number, document type, book and page, and record date.
3. Search by name, then by parcel. Run each owner's name, then the parcel number. Narrow the record dates to the months around the installation, when a filing is most likely.
4. Look at the document types. The Recorder's document type list includes FIXTURE FILING, UCC FINANCE STATEMENT, UCC FINANCE STATEMENT AMENDMENT and FINANCE STATEMENT. Any of those near your installation date is worth opening. Write down the instrument number, the record date and the party named.
5. Order a copy only if you need one. The Recorder charges $1.00 per page and $4.00 to certify a document, and its site carries a Nevada Attorney General alert about outside companies that charge far more for the same copies.

How to check the Secretary of State

The second office holds the financing statements that were not filed as fixture filings. Search them against your own name.

The Secretary of State's help page for UCC search requests forwarded to its ORION portal when we opened it on 2026-09-28. Nevada's statute sets the fee for a formal search response, including a certificate showing whether any financing statement names a particular debtor, at $60 when the request is made in writing and $30 when it comes by another medium the filing-office rules allow (NRS 104.9525 subsection 4). Check the portal for how it handles a simple lookup.

Reading what you find

Match the name to your statement. The secured party on a filing is the company that held the interest on the day it filed. Loans and leases are sold, and servicing moves, as it did from Sunnova to SunStrong. A filing in an older company's name is not proof of anything wrong. Ask the company on your current statement, in writing, to explain it.

Check the dates. Under NRS 104.9515 a filed financing statement is effective for 5 years after the date of filing, and lapses at the end of that period unless a continuation statement is filed in the 6 months before it expires. So look for later amendments and continuations, not only the first entry.

If you find nothing. A lease or loan with no filing on record is possible. Your contract still binds you; the record only tells you who put notice on the property.

When the loan is paid off

Get the filing cleared. NRS 104.9513 puts the duty on the secured party. Once nothing is owed, it must file or send a termination statement within 20 days after it receives your signed demand. For a filing that covers consumer goods, it must also do so within one month of payoff even without a demand. Send a signed written demand anyway, keep a copy, and search the record again a month later.

When you sell the house

The CFPB report quotes a warning worth reading before you list: a UCC lien on solar panels is technically not on the property, but it can muddy the title, and where it is treated as reaching the whole property it must be released or made subordinate to the mortgage or refinance.

The buyer's side of that, and what a title company asks for, is in buying a house that already has solar. How the four ways of paying for a system differ is in prepaid PPA, lease or loan.

If your installer or servicer changed

A filing tells you who took an interest. It does not tell you who fixes the roof. For that, see your solar company went out of business, and if your bill now comes from SunStrong, the pages for Sunnova and SunPower customers. If you are still paying a loan on a system nobody services, see do I still have to pay the loan.

We are not a title company or a law firm. What we can do is inspect the equipment on the roof and tell you, in writing, what it is and what state it is in.

We recheck this page quarterly. Last checked 2026-09-28. If a number here has moved, tell us and we will fix it the same week.