Is solar worth it in Virginia?

Virginia gets moderate sunshine — about 4.4 peak sun hours a day — and residential electricity runs around $0.14/kWh. For a typical $150-a-month power bill, that points to roughly a 10.0-kW system costing about $30,021 — with no federal tax credit, which ended for installations completed after December 31, 2025 — paying for itself in about 16.7 years and netting on the order of $31,343 over 25 years. Your own numbers will differ — the calculator above uses your real bill.

Virginia gets decent sun and has net metering plus an SREC market, with rates near the national average. Payback is reasonable, though it lengthened once the federal credit ended — the SREC market is now the main lever.

What changes the math in Virginia

• Your electricity rate — the more you pay per kWh, the more each solar kWh saves you. Virginia sits at about $0.14.
• Sun hours — more sun means a smaller, cheaper system covers the same usage. Virginia averages ~4.4 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.

Virginia: the rules that actually decide your payback

Who your utility is, and why it matters

Dominion Energy covers most of the state; Appalachian Power covers the southwest; electric cooperatives cover the rural remainder and set their own (generally similar) terms. The rules are administered by the State Corporation Commission under regulation 20VAC5-315.

What your exported power is worth

The headline from April 30, 2026: the SCC rejected Dominion's NEM 2.0 proposal outright, so 1:1 retail-rate net metering stands unchanged. Residential systems up to 20 kW qualify (25 kW under the statute), with a 12-month metering period and annual true-up — excess at true-up is compensated at an avoided-cost rate, so banking credits is good, spending them is better.

The Virginia incentive layer

Virginia's solar landscape is dominated by the retail net-metering rule rather than a tax credit; there is no meaningful state income-tax credit for residential solar. The certainty of the SCC's April ruling is itself valuable: quotes modelled on 1:1 retail are modelling the actual rule.

Battery and self-consumption

With retail-rate export intact, storage is an outage-resilience purchase in Virginia rather than an arbitrage one. The exception is time-of-use Dominion tariffs, where shifting evening load onto stored afternoon solar earns the retail spread on the peak rate — a spread that widens every summer-rate season. Hurricane-season outages are the other honest reason Virginians buy batteries: the same pack that shaves your peak bill keeps a refrigerator, a freezer and a medical device running through a multi-day grid failure, which the payback formula never captures and the purchase decision often does.

What to check on a Virginia quote

• Confirm the quote is modelled on 1:1 retail net metering — the April 30, 2026 SCC ruling kept it, and any model using lower export values is stale.
• If you are a Dominion customer on a time-of-use tariff, ask whether the savings model used your actual rate schedule's peak windows.
• Check the 12-month true-up handling: credits banked past the anniversary month are compensated at avoided cost, not retail.
• Cooperative customers: ask your co-op directly — most mirror the SCC framework but the details differ.

Programme and tariff detail above is summarised from Virginia State Corporation Commission — net metering and the VA SREC market. Last reviewed 20 August 2026 by SolarDime editorial. These rules change — confirm the current terms with your utility and the regulator before you sign.