The Solar Book

Every claim on this page checked against primary sources on

The federal solar credit is gone. Here is what is left.

On December 31, 2025 the 30% federal tax credit an American homeowner claimed for buying solar stopped applying. There was no transition rule: if the installation finished in 2026, the credit is gone regardless of when the contract was signed or the deposit paid. IRS FS-2025-05

What survives is the state and utility layer — rebates, production incentives, tax exemptions, net metering rules — plus a commercial credit that a company leasing you panels can still claim. 26 U.S.C. § 48E That layer is fragmented, changes mid-year without announcement, and is the reason this site exists.

Why another solar site

Because the ones people rely on stopped checking. The canonical incentives database has not touched roughly nine in ten of its pages in over a year, and the largest consumer solar site is not much better — which means the answers being quoted back to homeowners, and increasingly to AI assistants, describe a world in which the federal credit still exists.

This site does one thing differently: every claim carries the date it was last read against its source, and that date is printed on the page, on every individual incentive card, and in a machine-readable record anyone can audit. When a program is overdue for a recheck, the page says so instead of looking current.

Nothing here is copied from an aggregator. Federal claims are cited to the United States Code and to IRS guidance; state claims to the state's own statutes and agencies; utility programs to the administering utility's own program page. How we verify explains the rules in full.

Start with your state

Since the federal credit went, the answer to "is solar still worth it" is almost entirely a state and utility question. Two neighboring states can differ by more than the federal credit ever did.

The one thing to read first

If you are deciding right now, read buying versus leasing in 2026. Congress repealed the credit for homeowners who buy and left the one for companies that lease intact — and then wrote a leasing restriction that names solar water heaters and small wind turbines but not photovoltaic panels. That is the single largest change to residential solar economics in twenty years, and most of the market has not caught up with it.

If you would rather have the federal position whole — what was repealed, what was left standing, and which of the two applies to you — that is Federal solar incentives in 2026.

Get told when this changes

Solar incentives in your state moved three times in the first half of 2026. We recheck every program on this site on a schedule and email you when a number, a deadline, or a rule actually changes — not on a newsletter cadence, and not when nothing has happened.