Nevada solar rebates and incentives: 2024 guide

Nevada can be a great place to go solar. All-electric homes, complete with heat pumps, already make a ton of sense in some parts of the state—and they’re an even better deal when you can offset their operating costs with free power from a home solar system. Each solar panel can be highly productive thanks to the ample sunshine, and there are some pretty-good solar incentives to help speed up your payback period, too.

Nevada doesn't have any state-specific tax credits or rebates for solar, but you can still claim the federal Residential Clean Energy Tax Credit, which takes a big bite out of the cost of installation. The state also offers great incentives for solar batteries, which we’ll cover below.

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.

When you file your federal income taxes, you can claim this incentive as a credit towards your federal tax bill. Just keep in mind that to qualify for the ITC, you need to purchase your system either with cash or a solar loan–if you lease your system, you won't be eligible. 

You also need a high enough tax bill, though you can roll over any remaining credit year-to-year until the end of 2034 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

Unfortunately, Nevada doesn't offer any sales or property tax exemptions for solar.

Several utility companies in Nevada (including NV Energy) offer net metering—which is the ultimate solar 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 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, it gets sent back onto the grid, and the utility company gives you a credit.

When the sun isn’t shining and you need grid electricity to power your home, your electric company draws against those credits. 

You’ll settle up at the end of the monthly billing cycle. If you’ve exported more energy to the grid than you’ve consumed from the grid, you won’t have to pay for electricity that month. 

The nuances of net metering in Nevada depend on the utility company.

• NV Energy: The biggest electric utility in the state is required to offer net metering to customers with solar setups smaller than 25 kW. If you have extra energy credits at the end of a billing cycle, they’ll be converted to a dollar-based bill credit. Each kWh will be credited at 75% of the retail rate you pay—not a true 1-to-1 exchange, but still an OK deal. Your bill credits can be carried forward indefinitely, with no expiration date. Learn more here. 

• Overton Power District #5 (OPD5) offers net metering to customers with solar arrays of 10kW or smaller. Credits roll over monthly, and are converted to a dollar-based credit at the average wholesale rate that OPD5 pays its suppliers for electricity. We haven’t been able to find the published wholesale rate, and it’s likely to change over time. But based on similar arrangements from other utility companies, it could be something like half the retail rate for electricity. Learn more here.

• Valley Electric Association (VEA) does not offer net metering at all, though it does offer  net billing to customers with systems smaller than 25 kW. This policy has some important differences from net metering: Your credits get converted to dollars instantly, rather than at the end of the billing cycle, so you lose some of the benefit of overproducing during the daytime to then claim the credits at night. Each kWh gets credited at 75% of the retail rate. Under net billing, it can make a lot of sense to pair a solar system with solar batteries. The bill credit does roll over from month to month until a true-up date in September, when the slate gets wiped clean. Learn more here.

Solar batteries—either for home backup power, or to squeeze extra value out of your solar panels—can make good financial sense in Nevada, particularly if your utility company does not offer a net metering program.

NV Energy had previously offered a great incentive program for solar batteries. But as of June 2023, they’re no longer accepting new applications.

That said, any solar battery with more than 3 kWh of storage capacity is still eligible for the 30% federal tax credit.