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Sylvia Nam, a Waipahu retiree, saw the light after a solar salesman took her out for a meal at Zippy’s.

After all, there has probably never been a better time to switch to solar electricity in Hawaii. Electricity prices have soared to three times the national average, meanwhile the cost of solar has plummeted amid fierce competition in the industry and due to ever-cheaper panels from China.

So why shouldn’t someone like Nam get in on a good deal?

The salesman got her to agree to a contract with Islandwide Solar for 40 panels. It was a great deal, she was convinced. Yes, she would have to take out a loan for a lot of money, but the investment would get smarter and smarter over time.

It was only when Nam began to take a closer look at the other homes with solar panels in her neighborhood that she realized something was different. Others had solar panels, but nowhere near as many. In fact, the average number of solar panels on a residence is around 20. In comparison, Nam’s roof looked like a solar storage facility.

The system on Nam’s home isn’t just double the average size of a traditional residential solar system, it is also about twice as expensive. Islandwide Solar says that the system that they installed was calculated based on Nam’s previous electricity usage. Nonetheless, Nam says she began to feel ripped off.

Even if Nam’s fears are correct and the system is bigger and more expensive than she needed, a review of her contract suggests she still stands to save thousands of dollars from her switch to solar, if she uses it for the entirety of her 20-year energy purchase agreement. Nam, 72, hopes she lives that long.

In addition to the unexpected gamble on her longevity, Nam’s experiences with the fast-shifting alternative energy business are hardly surprising given the tumult in the industry.

The global solar market is undergoing major changes. After remarkable growth in the industry, especially in the islands, numerous international solar manufacturers have gone bankrupt as the industry consolidates, a trend that shows no signs of abating. And this has left some consumers vulnerable.

Not only did Nam realize that she might have made a bigger investment than necessary, Islandwide Solar confirmed that Sharp, the company that made her solar panels, intended to shut down its solar photovoltaic division. So if her system breaks again — it stopped working twice soon after it was installed — Nam frets over who will fix it.

The retiree has discovered that she is part of a community of solar consumers who have been orphaned by manufacturers that have gone out of business. “They are calling us abandoned children,” she explains.

Solar executives note that panels and inverters have very low failure rates, generally less than 2 percent, and that many customers, like Nam, are covered under service contracts — as long as they didn’t purchase the system. (If they did, they could potentially be left holding a useless warranty.)

In staid times, navigating the solar industry could be a challenge for an unsophisticated customer. These days it can be downright daunting.

On Oahu alone, the number of solar developers and sellers nearly doubled in the last two years to almost 200, according to data collected by Marco Mangelsdorf, president of Hilo-based ProVision Solar. Statewide, more solar was installed in Hawaii in 2012 than in the previous seven years combined, according to from the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.

In such a market, not surprisingly, advertising practices have become more aggressive. In addition to meals at Zippy’s, solar companies have offered Hawaiian Air miles, new air conditioning systems and vacations to Las Vegas.

Beyond the numerous companies to choose from, and their various offers, there are the financing options. A customer like Nam can buy a system outright, if they can afford it, or take out a loan. In either case, they benefit from generous federal and state tax credits that can reduce the cost of a system by as much as 60 percent. Or they can lease a system, paying a fixed cost for energy for 20 years, at a rate that’s below the current cost of electricity. Nam bought 20 years of energy upfront, which gives her access to Sunrun’s solar panel system for the duration of the contract.

And then there is the fine print. In Nam’s case, there were 16 pages — and she’s had a hard time understanding much of it.

Eric Olson, general manager for Hawaii operations at Islandwide Solar, the company that sold her on the system, visited Nam on Monday to try to calm her worries.

“We explained that she wasn’t taken for a ride on the system size,” he told Civil Beat, explaining that it was calculated based on the average amount of electricity Nam used in the past.

And if a panel breaks, Olson said, San Francisco-based Sunrun, the company that also did Nam’s solar financing, will replace it for free. Islandwide Solar will do any needed maintenance work, he said.

But Nam could be forgiven for not being able to follow all this.

From her side, it was complicated enough. She took out a loan to pay more than $20,000 for 20 years of electricity that she is paying back at a rate of $301 per month over seven years. For the 13 years after that, she will have no payments, so the longer she uses the system, the more beneficial it becomes.

Once the contract expires, she will have the option of buying the solar system on her house at a yet-to-be-determined market rate.

But in the meantime, Nam is trying to figure out whether she got a bad deal. She may have a point. Some local solar companies, the electric utility and state energy officials have all stressed the importance of doing energy audits before sizing a solar system. (Companies can benefit from selling bigger systems, so the idea is partly to make sure that customers don’t get over-sized systems.) There was no pre-purchase audit in Nam’s case.

Olson stresses that such audits aren’t standard practice in the industry. “There’s no financial incentive on the table for companies to do that, so they don’t,” he said.

His company assumes, given the high electricity rates in Hawaii, that prospective customers have already done all they can to reduce their energy use.

Still, he said that Islandwide Energy will conduct an after-the-fact energy assessment of Nam’s home to calculate why she is using so much electricity and the company will offer suggestions about how to reduce her consumption.

And if need be, he promised, the company will remove some of the panels and reimburse her.