Is solar worth it in Texas?

Texas gets good sunshine — about 5.2 peak sun hours a day — and residential electricity runs around $0.15/kWh. For a typical $150-a-month power bill, that points to roughly a 7.9-kW system costing about $23,709 — with no federal tax credit, which ended for installations completed after December 31, 2025 — paying for itself in about 13.2 years and netting on the order of $37,655 over 25 years. Your own numbers will differ — the calculator above uses your real bill.

Texas has abundant sun and high summer use, so systems produce a lot. There's no statewide net metering — buyback depends on your retailer/utility — but several plans offer strong solar buyback. The federal credit no longer applies anywhere. Shop the buyback plan.

What changes the math in Texas

• Your electricity rate — the more you pay per kWh, the more each solar kWh saves you. Texas sits at about $0.15.
• Sun hours — more sun means a smaller, cheaper system covers the same usage. Texas averages ~5.2 hours.
• Net metering / buyback — how your utility credits power you export swings the payback; check your specific utility's current terms.
• Install cost — quotes vary by installer and roof; the calculator defaults to a typical $/watt you can override.

Texas: the rules that actually decide your payback

Who your utility is, and why it matters

Texas is the hardest state to generalise about because most of it is deregulated. In the ERCOT competitive market you buy energy from a Retail Electric Provider you chose, while a separate transmission and distribution utility — Oncor, CenterPoint, AEP Texas or Texas-New Mexico Power — owns the wires and bills through them. Outside that market, El Paso Electric, Entergy Texas and SWEPCO operate as traditional regulated utilities, and municipal utilities such as Austin Energy and CPS Energy, along with the electric cooperatives, set their own terms entirely.

What your exported power is worth

There is no statewide net metering in Texas, and this is the single most misunderstood fact about solar here. Nothing obliges a retail provider to buy your exported power at all. Buyback is a product feature of the plan you signed, which means it is negotiable, comparable — and cancellable when your contract term ends. Plans that advertise one-for-one credit commonly attach conditions: credits may be capped at your consumption, may apply only to the energy charge and not to the delivery charges the wires company levies, and may not roll over indefinitely.

The Texas incentive layer

Texas has no state income tax and therefore no state solar tax credit. There is a property-tax exemption for the value a solar installation adds to a home. Beyond that the incentive layer is local: Austin Energy and CPS Energy have run residential rebate and value-of-solar programmes, and some co-ops offer their own. None of these is statewide, and availability changes with each programme year.

Battery and self-consumption

Two things push Texans toward storage. Summer load peaks hard in the late afternoon, exactly as solar output falls away; and after the February 2021 grid failure, resilience became a mainstream purchase reason rather than a niche one. With no guaranteed buyback, self-consumption is also worth more here than in net-metered states — but a battery sized for outage resilience and a battery sized for bill savings are not the same battery, so decide which you are buying.

What to check on a Texas quote

• Name the retail plan you would move to and read its solar buyback terms in the Electricity Facts Label, not in the brochure.
• Ask whether buyback credits offset TDU delivery charges or only the energy charge — the difference is large on a Texas bill.
• Check the plan's contract length against the system's 25-year life, and ask what happens to buyback when the term ends.
• If you are served by a municipal utility or a co-op, ignore the retail-market advice entirely and ask them directly what they pay for exports.
• Ask for a production estimate that shows summer months separately — annual averages hide the months that matter most here.

Programme and tariff detail above is summarised from Public Utility Commission of Texas — retail buyback plans (no statewide net metering). Last reviewed 20 August 2026 by SolarDime editorial. These rules change — confirm the current terms with your utility and the regulator before you sign.