Texas solar economics run on the property tax exemption and whichever provider serves you
The property tax exemption is strong, statewide, and only needs to be filed once
Under Texas Tax Code Section 11.27, the full value your solar system adds to your home's assessment is exempt from property tax statewide, meaning installing solar does not raise your property tax bill the way most home improvements would. You file Form 50-123, the Exemption Application for Solar or Wind-Powered Energy Devices, with your county appraisal district by April 30 of the year following your installation. Once approved, the exemption stays in effect for as long as the system remains operational, with no annual refiling required, which is a meaningfully lower-friction process than states that require yearly reapplication. Battery storage installed as part of a solar system and used to store solar-generated electricity generally qualifies under the same exemption. With no federal residential credit for cash or loan purchases placed in service in 2026, and no state income tax credit, this exemption stands out as one of the more reliably valuable pieces of Texas's incentive picture.
There is no statewide net metering mandate, so your compensation depends entirely on where you live
Texas has no state law requiring any utility or retail provider to pay you for excess solar generation, which makes Texas meaningfully different from states with a standard net metering policy. In roughly 85% of the state, covered by the deregulated ERCOT market, homeowners must actively choose a Retail Electric Provider that offers a solar buyback plan, since not every REP does, with reported rates commonly falling somewhere between about 4 and 12 cents per kWh depending on the specific plan, generally below the retail rate you pay for incoming electricity. The Public Utility Commission of Texas operates the Power to Choose marketplace specifically to help homeowners compare these plans by ZIP code, and it's worth using before signing with any single provider, since the difference between plans can be substantial. The rebate deadline tracker can help you keep tabs on plan enrollment windows once you've narrowed your options.
Austin Energy uses a genuinely different structure than net metering, and it's worth understanding why
Austin Energy's own program page describes the Value of Solar tariff as crediting 100% of your system's total production at a fixed rate, reported at 9.91 cents per kWh for 2026, regardless of whether you personally consumed that electricity or it went to the grid. Separately, all of your household's electricity consumption, whether from your solar system or the grid, is billed at the standard tiered retail rate. This buy-all, sell-all structure is fundamentally different from net metering, where only the surplus beyond your own usage gets credited; under Value of Solar, every kilowatt-hour you produce earns the VoS rate, and every kilowatt-hour you consume is billed separately at retail. The VoS rate itself is calculated as a multi-year rolling average of avoided cost components and updated periodically, so it can shift from year to year rather than staying fixed indefinitely, and a $2,500 flat rebate is also available for Austin Energy customers using an approved contractor, on top of the VoS credits. The DSIRE database of state incentives lists the incentives that apply in your state, with links to each program's rules.
CPS Energy's current program is genuinely unclear, and that's worth saying plainly
Sources on CPS Energy's residential solar compensation conflict directly with each other. Some describe CPS Energy as currently offering net metering credited at the full retail rate. Others describe the residential rebate program as exhausted or being phased out, with ongoing compensation instead following an avoided cost structure rather than retail crediting. Rather than presenting one of these as the settled answer, the honest approach is to say the current terms are unclear from available guides and should be confirmed directly with CPS Energy before you build your project math around any specific figure. Compare the broader regional picture against a neighboring state with the Arkansas incentive estimator or the Louisiana incentive estimator.
Your rebate total changes what a loan costs each month, and the combined loan and rebate timing tool shows that payment once you enter both figures. If a battery is part of your plan, the savings with battery vs without battery comparison shows the difference it makes.