West Virginia solar rebates and incentives: 2024 guide

If you live in West Virginia and want to power your home with clean, sustainable energy—maybe even during a power outage—there are a couple of big incentives for going solar that can help lower the upfront costs and speed up your payback period.  

The only significant solar incentive in West Virginia is actually the federal Residential Clean Energy Tax Credit, formerly known as the ITC.

Residential Clean Energy Credit

The Residential Clean Energy Credit, formerly known as the federal investment tax credit (ITC), can reduce your solar panel system's cost by 30%. Your entire system qualifies for this incentive, including equipment, labor, permitting, and sales tax. 

You also need a high enough tax bill, though you can roll over any remaining credit year-to-year until 2035 when the ITC expires. The only time you might be eligible for a direct payment for the ITC is if you're a tax-exempt entity, like a nonprofit organization.

If you connect your solar panel system to the grid in 2024, you can benefit from full net metering—the ultimate solar power incentive. 

Under net metering, the sun doesn’t need to shine all the time to get massive value from your solar panels. Your utility company (typically Appalachian, Monongahela, or Potomac Edison) essentially works like a bank account for all the energy your solar panels produce in a given month.

When the sun shines, your home’s electrical system first takes as much power as it needs from the solar panels. If the panels make any excess energy that your home doesn’t need, it gets sent back onto the grid. The utility company gives you a credit for that electricity.

When the sun isn’t shining and you need grid electricity to power your home, your utility draws against those credits. At the end of the monthly billing cycle, your credits will be settled up.

There are a few nuances to keep in mind about West Virginia’s version of net metering.

• Credits are calculated in kWh, not dollars (for now). Depending on the weather and your solar array, you could pay very, very little on your electric bill every month—but it won’t be $0, because you will still need to pay cash every month for any fixed fees, like meter connection costs. 

• Your credits can roll forward indefinitely. That is, they never expire. This is a great policy for solar owners, because it allows you to rack up hundreds or thousands of kWh of credits during the sunny months, and then use them up over the wintertime.

• The net metering rules are changing in 2025. Monongahela Power and Potomac Edison recently reached a new settlement with the West Virginia Public Service Commission to establish new net metering rates. Once approved, Monongahela Power and Potomac Edison customers will be paid 9.343 cents for their excess solar credits at the end of every billing cycle—a bit less than the retail rate. So within a given monthly billing cycle, you get full credit for every kWh you send to the grid. But you’ll get less than full credit for any leftover kWh to roll forward at the end of that cycle. Current solar customers and anyone who signs up before December 31, 2024 will be grandfathered into the current, more favorable rates for 25 years. Currently, this settlement does not apply to Appalachian Power customers.

West Virginia doesn't offer any state-specific battery incentives. However, all batteries above 3 kWh in size are eligible for the 30% federal tax credit. 

Solar batteries can boost your energy independence and provide backup power during an outage. But because the net metering policies in West Virginia are so consumer friendly, you don’t need a battery to get the full financial value out of your solar panels.

If you're looking for solar installers in West Virginia, here are some popular suggestions: