Kansas solar rebates and incentives: 2026 guide

Kansas doesn't offer the strongest solar incentive programs out there. But that doesn't mean solar isn't worth it—especially if your electric bills are eating up a big chunk of your monthly budget.

Solar's real value isn't about rebates. It's about taking control of your electricity costs for the next 25-30 years. As utility rates continue their steady climb, locking in lower energy costs now can deliver substantial savings over time. Even without robust state programs, many Kansas homeowners with decent sun exposure and moderate to high electric bills find that solar still pays for itself. Here's how you may be able to lower your solar costs in Kansas—and whether it makes sense for your home.

Unfortunately, Kansas doesn't offer many incentives for solar. But if your electric bills are high, going solar can still make sense.

Yes, Kansas has a property tax exemption. Installing solar panels will typically increase the value of your home, but this exemption means you will not owe additional taxes based on the higher valuation. 

If you filed for your exemption on or before Dec. 2016, you’re permanently exempt from those taxes. If you filed after Dec. 2016, your tax exemption is only in effect for the 10 taxable years directly following the year you filed, and it expires after that.

While many states also offer a solar sales tax exemption, unfortunately there is no relief from sales tax in Kansas when you go solar.

If you connect your solar panel system to the grid, you can benefit from net metering—a solar buyback program, and arguably the best kind of solar incentive. 

Under net metering, the sun doesn’t need to shine all the time to make the most of your solar panels, because your utility company works sort of like a bank account for solar power.

When the sun is shining, your home’s electrical system first takes as much power as it needs from your solar panels. Any excess solar power that your home doesn’t need gets sent back onto the grid, and the utility company gives you a credit for each kWh they get.

When the sun isn’t shining, and your home needs to draw electricity from the grid, the utility starts counting that energy use against your banked credits. 

Depending on the weather, your energy use, and your solar array, you could end up owing very little, or even nothing, on your electricity bills—and net metering makes that a lot more likely than other kinds of solar billing arrangements. 

A few nuances to keep in mind about net metering in Kansas:

• In 2014, Kansas updated the maximum system size for residential customers from 15 kW to 150 kW AC. That said, specific utility companies may have their own guidelines. This is something you and your installer will need to keep in mind when you design an array. At the end of each billing cycle, leftover energy credits are converted to dollar-based bill credits. The excess credits aren’t converted at quite the retail rate of electricity, but it’s something very close—the “monthly system average cost” per kWh.

• Leftover bill credits carry forward from month to month, but expire annually on March 31. You can bank your bill credits throughout the summer and use them to help offset your costs during the winter months, when there’s typically not enough sun to cover normal electricity use. But if you don’t use up the credits by the end of the winter, you’ll lose them.

• Not all utilities offer net metering—but the big ones do. Kansas has two main investor-owned utilities (IOUs)—Evergy (formerly Westar and KCP&L) and the Empire District Electric Company—and they’re both required to offer their customers net metering. Municipal or cooperative electric utilities in the state aren’t required to offer net metering, but many of them do on similar terms as the larger companies.

• All utilities offer some type of solar buyback policy. While small utility companies aren’t required to offer net metering, they are required to offer a “parallel generation” program—or what we typically call net billing. If you're an IOU customer, you can choose this over net metering, but we don't recommend it since you'll usually save more with net metering compared to net billing. With net billing, your utility company doesn't bank your energy credits (in kWh); instead, they pay you a bill credit (in dollars) for all the solar power you send to the grid. As far as net billing programs go, the terms in Kansas are pretty good, though: For every kWh you export, they’ll pay you 1.5 times the avoided cost rate (which is what your utility company pays for electricity).

Kansas doesn't offer any state-specific incentives for solar batteries.

Since Kansas has such a solid net metering policy, there’s not a strong financial case for owning a solar battery, but you can still use one as a source of backup power—it's like a cleaner version of a gas generator that increases your energy independence.