Privacy

Who we are, and what this covers

The Solar Book (thesolarbook.com) is an independent reference site about United States solar incentives, operated from Colorado, United States ("we", "us", "our"). This page covers the website and the server functions behind its alert form. It does not cover the statutes, agencies, utilities, and other sites we link to, which are governed by their own policies. The site is directed to a United States audience.

What we collect

• An email address, only if you enter one in the alert form.
• The state code attached to the page you signed up from, so we can send you changes that concern you rather than all of them.
• The page URL you signed up from, so we can tell which pages are worth writing more of.

The form also contains a hidden field that human visitors never see. It exists to catch spam bots and collects nothing from real people.

We do not ask for your name, address, phone number, income, utility, or roof, and there is nowhere on this site to enter them.

What we do with it

We email you when an incentive changes in the state you asked about. Not on a schedule, and not when nothing has happened. Every message carries a one-click unsubscribe that takes effect immediately, and signing up also sends a notification of the signup to our own inbox.

What we never do

• We do not sell your address. Not to installers, not to lead brokers, not to anyone.
• We do not pass you to a solar company as a lead. This is a permanent policy, not a current practice. See about.
• We do not call you. We have no phone number for you and do not want one.

Who processes data on our behalf

• Cloudflare hosts the site and operates the database (Cloudflare D1) that stores the subscriber list. That list is a single database we run, and it also serves our other independent reference sites: every record is tagged with the site and topic it came from, each site mails only its own subscribers, and no list is ever mailed on another site's behalf. Cloudflare's privacy policy.
• Resend delivers the email we send: the sign-up confirmation, the change alerts, and the signup notification to our inbox. It sees your address and the message content. Resend's privacy policy.

Both act as service providers on our instructions. Beyond them, we disclose personal information only if legally required to by a valid subpoena, court order, or other lawful demand.

Server logs

Like any web host, Cloudflare keeps standard request logs for the sites it serves, including your IP address and browser user agent, and uses them at the platform level for security and delivery. We do not use those logs to build profiles of readers, and we keep no record of our own associating any person with any page.

Analytics, cookies, and browser storage

The site sets no advertising or tracking cookies and loads no third-party scripts of any kind; the content security policy the pages are served with blocks outside scripts outright. The only scripts on the pages are a few inline lines of our own: the handler that submits the alert form, and the light/dark toggle. If you use that toggle, your choice is stored as a single value in your browser's localStorage. It is functional only, it stays on your device, and it is never sent to us.

How long we keep it

Your subscriber record is kept until you ask us to delete it. To be exact about the mechanics: the unsubscribe link marks your record as unsubscribed, which stops all mail immediately and permanently, and a deletion request to [email protected] removes the record entirely, a step we carry out by hand when you ask. Signup notification emails stay in our inbox and are deleted when a deletion request is honored, and Resend retains delivery logs under its own retention schedule.

Your rights

Email [email protected] to ask what we hold about you (realistically: one email address, a state code, and a page URL), to correct it, or to have it deleted. We verify a request against the subscribed address, respond within 45 days, and honor these requests for everyone who asks, whatever state or country you live in. Exercising them costs nothing, requires no account, and changes nothing about how the site treats you.

Where we stand under the Colorado Privacy Act. The Act applies to businesses above defined thresholds: broadly, those controlling or processing the personal data of at least 100,000 Colorado consumers in a year, or at least 25,000 while deriving revenue from selling personal data. A site holding voluntarily typed email addresses, and selling none of them, is nowhere near either threshold, so the Act does not currently impose obligations on us. We honor access, correction, and deletion requests anyway. If we decline a request and you disagree, say so: someone other than the first reviewer will re-review the decision within 45 days, and you may also raise it with the Colorado Attorney General.

Children

This site is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has given us an address, email [email protected] and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

This policy is effective August 18, 2026. If what this site does with an address ever changes, this page changes in the same release, and the effective date on this line changes with it. That is a rule we hold ourselves to, because a privacy policy that lags the code is worse than none.