Every claim on this page checked against primary sources on
Georgia solar incentives
Georgia has no state solar tax credit, and the bigger problem is what happens if you install solar and do nothing else. Georgia Power states that any customer with solar behind their meter who has not elected one of its other programs is automatically enrolled in Energy Offset Only — a program under which exported energy "will not be compensated" at all.
The program that does pay is RNR-Instantaneous Netting, worth 7.2188 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2026: a Solar Avoided Energy Cost rate of 3.2188 cents plus a flat four-cent adder. You have to ask for it, it requires a written service agreement before interconnection, and it is capped — first come, first served, until installed renewables reach 0.2% of Georgia Power's prior-year peak demand.
Does Georgia Power pay you for solar you send to the grid?
Only if you sign up for the right program, and only at a fraction of retail. Georgia Power runs three arrangements. RNR-Monthly Netting, under which a month's exports offset a month's consumption, filled its 5,000-customer pilot and the tariff now states it "is not available for additional customer participation." RNR-Instantaneous Netting is open: it pays a Renewable Generation Credit at the Solar Avoided Energy Cost rate — 3.2188 cents per kilowatt-hour for 2026 — plus a flat four-cent Renewable Generation Adder, both summed monthly and applied to your bill, for a total of 7.2188 cents. And Energy Offset Only pays nothing for exports at all; Georgia Power automatically enrols any solar customer who has not elected something else. The word "instantaneous" is the one that costs money: the tariff defines Excess Energy as electricity delivered to the grid at any time which exceeds what the Company is supplying you at that moment, so far more of your generation is treated as export than under monthly netting. A residential system is capped at 10 kilowatts AC. None of this applies if your power comes from one of Georgia's 41 EMCs or 52 municipal systems.
Verified against primary sources on .
Georgia has no state solar tax credit — the Department of Revenue's own 2025 instruction booklet lists every credit an individual can claim, codes 102 through 161, and solar appears nowhere in it. It will credit you for an electric vehicle charger and not for the panels that would charge it. What Georgia has instead is a set of utility tariffs with a trap in them: the good one, monthly netting, filled its 5,000-customer pilot and is closed forever to new applicants; the one you can still get pays 7.2188 cents a kilowatt-hour for exports in 2026 and nets instantaneously rather than monthly; and if you install solar and do not affirmatively elect it, Georgia Power automatically enrolls you in a program that pays you nothing at all for anything you send to the grid. On top of that, a residential system is capped at 10 kilowatts AC by both the tariff and the state's third-party financing law.
| Program | What it pays | Status | Ownership | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia Power RNR-Instantaneous Netting | $0.072188/kWh | Open now | Buy or lease | |
| Georgia Power Energy Offset Only — the default | No direct payment | Open now | Buy or lease | |
| Georgia Power Community Solar (Schedule CS-2) | No direct payment | Open now | — |
The three ways Georgia Power treats your exported solar
One pays, one pays nothing, and the good one closed years ago. Which of them you end up on is a decision you make at application time, and it is not reversible by wishing.
Georgia Power RNR-Instantaneous Netting
$0.072188/kWhSolar Avoided Energy Cost rate of 3.2188 cents/kWh for 2026 plus a flat 4 cents/kWh Renewable Generation Adder, each summed monthly and applied to the total monthly bill
The only Georgia Power program that actually pays for exported solar: about 7.2 cents a kilowatt-hour in 2026, and you have to ask for it — it is not what you get by default.
When: Open on a first-come, first-served basis until the 0.2%-of-peak-demand cap is reached.
Who qualifies, in full
- Residential applications are capped at a peak generating capacity of 10 kW AC. Commercial applications are capped at 250 kW AC, and resources between 100 and 250 kW AC may not exceed 125% of the premises' preceding-year metered peak demand
- You must enter into a written RNR Service Agreement with Georgia Power before interconnection or operation, and before receiving any compensation
- Available first come, first served "until the cumulative generating capacity of all renewable sources equals to 0.2 percent (0.2%) of the Company's annual peak demand in the previous year"
- "Excess Energy" is defined as electricity delivered to the grid at any time which exceeds the electricity supplied by the Company to the customer — instantaneous, not monthly. This is the single most consequential sentence in the tariff
- Two separate credits are paid: a Renewable Generation Credit calculated using the Solar Avoided Energy Cost rate, and a Renewable Generation Adder at a flat four cents per kWh. Both are summed monthly and reduce the total monthly bill
- The Solar Avoided Energy Cost is updated annually under Georgia PSC Docket No. 16573, so the 3.2188-cent component changes every year while the four-cent adder does not
- Interconnection fee of $100 for projects up to 250 kW AC, added to the bill after interconnection completes and payable in full before permission to operate
- Bi-directional metering carries no charge; single-directional metering costs $5.97 per month single-phase or $12.66 poly-phase
- Applications go through PowerClerk, and the interconnection agreement is between Georgia Power and the customer regardless of who fills in the form
- Not available to customers served by an EMC or a municipal electric system — this is a Georgia Power tariff only
- NOT VERIFIED HERE: how much of the 0.2% capacity cap has been taken up. Georgia Power does not publish a running total the way SGIP or the APS tranche table do
Authority: Georgia Power Schedule RNR-11; The Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act of 2001
What we saw: Filed tariff downloaded and read as a 3-page PDF on 2026-07-28 (Schedule RNR-11, Original 11.00, effective with bills rendered for the billing month of January 2023 — still the revision Georgia Power links from both its solar FAQ and its How It Works page). Verbatim: "RNR-Instantaneous Netting is available to eligible customers on a first come, first served basis until the cumulative generating capacity of all renewable sources equals to 0.2 percent (0.2%) of the Company's annual peak demand in the previous year." And: "For customers receiving RNR-Instantaneous Netting all Excess Energy will receive two credits, which will each be summed on a monthly basis, and then will be used to reduce the customer's total monthly bill. 1. Renewable Generation Credit, calculated using Solar Avoided Energy Cost rate 2. Renewable Generation Adder, calculated using a rate of four cents (4¢) per kWh." Definition, verbatim: "'Excess Energy' is electricity delivered to the grid by a Customer's generation resource at any time, which exceeds the electricity supplied by the Company to the Customer." Eligibility, verbatim: "Renewable Energy Resources are residential applications with a peak generating capacity of less than or equal to 10 kW AC." The 2026 rate component comes from Georgia Power's own solar FAQ, read the same day: "excess energy generated by a customer's solar panels are credited at the annual Solar Avoided Cost Rate per kilowatt hour (kWh), which is 3.2188 ¢/kWh for the year 2026. During the 2022 rate case, the Public Service Commission approved an additional 4¢/kWh that will be added to the annual solar avoided cost." The 7.2188 figure carried in this entry is the sum of those two published components, which the tariff directs to be summed. The $100 interconnection fee is from Georgia Power's How It Works page, read the same day; the metering charges are in the tariff.
Administered by Georgia Power Company, under Georgia Public Service Commission tariff.
Checked against Georgia Power — Schedule RNR-11, filed tariff on
Georgia Power Energy Offset Only — the default
No direct paymentNo compensation of any kind for energy exported to the grid
The program you are put on if you install solar and do not ask for anything else — it pays nothing for exports, and Georgia Power enrols you in it automatically.
When: Always available; it is the default enrolment.
Who qualifies, in full
- Georgia Power states that any customer who has solar installed behind their meter and who has not elected to participate in one of its other programs will be automatically enrolled in this program
- Systems on Energy Offset Only "are not designed to push energy back onto the grid, and will not be compensated for any excess energy that is generated"
- There is no system size limit, which sounds generous and is not: the limit exists on the paying programs precisely because they pay
- You still must register the system and meet Georgia Power's interconnection requirements, and still pay the $100 interconnection fee for projects up to 250 kW AC
- The practical effect is that a system deliberately oversized for a Georgia Power home, with no RNR election, donates every exported kilowatt-hour
- Listed here as an incentive entry because it is the outcome a Georgia homeowner is most likely to end up with by accident, and because no roundup carries it
What we saw: Page read 2026-07-28, verbatim: "Energy Offset is designed for residential customers who would like to maximize the size of the solar installation, in order to offset their energy usage. Systems are not designed to push energy back onto the grid, and will not be compensated for any excess energy that is generated. Any customer that has solar installed behind their meter who has not elected to participate in one of our other programs, will be automatically enrolled in this program." The same page gives the fee schedule: projects up to 250 kW AC on RNR or Energy Offset Only pay a $100 interconnection fee; projects above 250 kW AC also pay a witness test fee of $3,900 on a weekday or $4,400 at a weekend, and an impact study fee ranging from $1,930 to $5,700 ($2,400 on the Network Underground).
Administered by Georgia Power Company.
Checked against Georgia Power — Residential Rooftop Solar, How It Works on
Why "instantaneous" is the expensive word in the tariff
The difference between Georgia Power's two netting arrangements is not the rate. It is what counts as an export in the first place.
Under monthly netting — the closed pilot — Georgia Power summed a month of exports and used them to reduce a month of consumption. Generation at noon offset usage at 9pm, because both landed in the same monthly bucket. Under instantaneous netting, the tariff defines Excess Energy as electricity "delivered to the grid by a Customer's generation resource at any time, which exceeds the electricity supplied by the Company to the Customer." Schedule RNR-11
A house draws maybe half a kilowatt at midday in spring and a solar array might be making four. Under instantaneous netting, three and a half of those kilowatts are an export, bought at 7.2188 cents — and the same house buys power back that evening at the retail rate. Under monthly netting, that midday generation would simply have cancelled the evening consumption. Same panels, same roof, same weather, materially different bill.
Two practical consequences follow, and neither shows up in a national payback calculator:
- Self-consumption is worth far more than export in Georgia, by a wider margin than the headline rate suggests. Shifting load into daylight hours — the dishwasher, the water heater, an EV — converts seven-cent exports into retail-rate avoided purchases.
- Storage changes the arithmetic more here than the rate table implies, for the same reason: a battery moves generation from the export column to the self-consumption column.
Why Georgia has no solar tax credit, in the state's own words
A negative claim is the easiest kind to get wrong, so here is how you would know rather than just the assertion.
The Georgia Department of Revenue's 2025 IT-511 Individual Income Tax Instruction Booklet contains the complete list of tax credit codes an individual may claim on Form 500, Schedule 2 — codes 102 through 161, running from the Employer's Credit for Approved Employee Retraining to the Rural Zone Tax Credit. Across all sixty-nine pages of that booklet, the word "solar" appears zero times. So does "energy". Georgia DOR, 2025 IT-511
What Georgia does have is code 119, the Electric Vehicle Charger Credit. The state will give you a credit for the charger and nothing for the panels that would charge it.
Combined with the federal repeal of § 25D for expenditures after December 31, 2025, that means a Georgia homeowner buying a system today gets no tax credit from anyone. The federal side is here.
Net billing in Georgia
Georgia does not have net metering for new solar customers, and the way it stopped is unusual. Georgia Power ran a 5,000-customer pilot called RNR-Monthly Netting under which a month's exports offset a month's consumption — effectively retail value. That pilot filled, and the tariff now states plainly that it "is not available for additional customer participation." What replaced it is RNR-Instantaneous Netting, where "Excess Energy" means electricity delivered to the grid at any instant that exceeds what you are drawing at that instant. Because a solar array's output and a house's demand rarely match minute to minute, far more of your generation counts as excess under instantaneous netting than under monthly netting — and every kilowatt-hour of it is bought at the solar avoided cost rate plus a four-cent adder rather than credited against your bill at retail. There is also a third possibility, and it is the default: do nothing, and Georgia Power enrolls you in Energy Offset Only, which pays nothing for exports at all.
| System size | Which utilities | What you are paid for exports |
|---|---|---|
| Residential, up to 10 kW AC — RNR-Instantaneous Netting | Georgia Power | Two credits, each summed monthly and applied against the total monthly bill: a Renewable Generation Credit at the Solar Avoided Energy Cost rate, which Georgia Power states is 3.2188 cents/kWh for 2026, plus a Renewable Generation Adder of a flat 4 cents/kWh approved in the 2022 rate case. 7.2188 cents/kWh in total for 2026. |
| Residential — RNR-Monthly Netting | Georgia Power | CLOSED. Available only to customers already in the existing 5,000-customer pilot. Exports are summed monthly and reduce total monthly consumption, with anything beyond that credited at the Solar Avoided Energy cost rate. Non-transferrable between premises, 15-year term limit expiring no later than December 31, 2038, after which the customer is automatically moved to Instantaneous Netting. |
| Any size — Energy Offset Only (the default) | Georgia Power | Nothing. Georgia Power states that any customer with solar behind their meter who has not elected one of the other programs is automatically enrolled in Energy Offset Only, that systems on it are not designed to push energy back onto the grid, and that they will not be compensated for any excess energy generated. There is no system size limit, because there is no export payment to limit. |
| The cap on the program that is still open | Georgia Power | RNR-Instantaneous Netting is first come, first served "until the cumulative generating capacity of all renewable sources equals to 0.2 percent (0.2%) of the Company's annual peak demand in the previous year." Georgia Power's FAQ described the program as currently open when this page was checked. |
| Everyone not served by Georgia Power | 41 EMCs and 52 municipal systems | Not covered by this tariff at all. The Public Service Commission states it has only limited regulatory authority over Georgia's EMCs and municipal electric systems, so each sets its own terms. Under the Georgia Territorial Electric Service Act a residential customer cannot choose their supplier — the territorial map does. |
Read from Georgia Power — Electric Service Tariff Schedule RNR-11 (filed tariff) on .
The 10 kilowatt ceiling, and where it comes from
Georgia caps a residential solar system at 10 kilowatts AC, and it does so twice — once in the tariff and once in statute, which is why it is not negotiable.
Schedule RNR-11 makes 10 kW AC the eligibility limit for a residential Renewable Energy Resource. And the Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015 — the law that made third-party solar financing legal in Georgia at all — defines its "capacity limit" as ten kilowatts for a residential application. O.C.G.A. § 46-3-62 So a leased or PPA-financed system is statutorily capped at 10 kW, and a system of any ownership above 10 kW falls outside the RNR tariff.
That is a real constraint on a large house in a hot state, and no national sizing tool applies it.
Georgia wrote a rule that stops utilities inventing requirements
The same 2015 Act contains a provision worth knowing if an interconnection process starts sprouting conditions.
If such applicable safety, power quality, and interconnection requirements are met, an electric service provider shall not require compliance with additional safety or performance standards, require the performance of or payment for additional tests, or require the purchase of additional liability insurance.
The requirements it refers to are the ordinary ones — the National Electrical Code, the National Electrical Safety Code, IEEE and Underwriters Laboratories. Meet those on a residential system up to 10 kW and the utility may not add its own. The Act also bars an electric service provider from preventing or interfering with a third-party-financed installation, and requires you or your financing agent to give the utility at least 30 days' notice before the system operates.
Community solar, and a warning from the utility itself
Georgia Power sells subscriptions to its own solar portfolio. We are including it because it is a real, open program — and because its filed tariff says something about it that a utility almost never writes down.
Georgia Power Community Solar (Schedule CS-2)
No direct paymentYou pay $24.00 per 1 kW block per month on top of your normal electricity cost; the tariff itself states a customer should expect the charges to exceed any bill credits received
A subscription to Company-owned solar that Georgia Power's own filed tariff tells you, in writing, will cost you more than it pays back.
When: Subscription capped at 8,000 kW blocks statewide. One-year terms with automatic month-to-month renewal.
Who qualifies, in full
- Open to customers on the Residential Service (R) or General Service (GS) tariffs
- Subscriptions are sold in 1 kW blocks at $24.00 per block per month for Residential Service, $25.00 for General Service — charged in addition to your normal cost of electricity
- Residential subscriptions are capped at the lesser of your average monthly consumption over the preceding 12 months divided by the estimated average production of a 1 kW block, or 10 kW (10 blocks)
- The tariff states verbatim: "Based on the structure of the program, a customer should anticipate the CS charges to participate in the program will exceed any bill credits received"
- If your subscribed blocks produce more in a month than you use, the excess is credited at the Company's solar avoided cost under the RNR tariff — and those credits "can only be used to offset customer charges for electric service within the month the credits are produced and cannot be monetized or transferred"
- Total programme subscription is limited to 8,000 kW blocks, of which up to 5,000 may be allocated to the income-qualified pilot
- One-year initial term, then automatic month-to-month renewal; 30 days' notice to reduce or cancel after the first 12 months; you may only rejoin 12 months after cancelling
- The Company "reserves the right to terminate any or all contracts and/or this tariff at any time at the Company's discretion"
- STALE PROVISION RECORDED: the filed tariff's Income Qualified Community Solar pilot — under which corporate sponsors pay $18.00 of the $24.00 monthly charge for households at or below 200% of the federal poverty guidelines — states "This pilot will expire December 31, 2025." That date has passed, and the tariff on file still carries the provision unamended
Authority: Georgia Power Electric Service Tariff, Community Solar Schedule CS-2
What we saw: Filed tariff read as a 2-page PDF on 2026-07-28 (Schedule CS-2, Original 11.30, effective with bills rendered for the billing month of January 2023). Rate, verbatim: "$24.00 per one (1) kW block for Residential Service (R)" and "$25.00 per one (1) kW block for General Service (GS)." The warning is the Company's own, verbatim: "Based on the structure of the program, a customer should anticipate the CS charges to participate in the program will exceed any bill credits received." Credit handling, verbatim: "Bill credits can only be used to offset customer charges for electric service within the month the credits are produced and cannot be monetized or transferred." Subscription cap, verbatim: "Subscription to the CS tariff is limited to 8,000 kW blocks. Up to 5,000 kW blocks may be allocated to the IQCS pilot." Income-qualified pilot, verbatim: "participating corporate sponsors will pay $18.00 of a participating income qualified customer's monthly CS subscription charge... This pilot will expire December 31, 2025." Read on 2026-07-28, that expiry is already in the past and the tariff has not been amended to remove it.
Administered by Georgia Power Company.
Checked against Georgia Power — Community Solar Schedule CS-2, filed tariff on
"A customer should anticipate the CS charges will exceed any bill credits received"
That is not our characterisation. It is a sentence in Georgia Power's filed Community Solar tariff, Schedule CS-2. Schedule CS-2
A residential subscription costs $24.00 per one-kilowatt block per month, on top of your normal electricity cost, and any month your blocks out-produce your usage the excess is credited at the solar avoided cost — the same low rate as the RNR credit — with those credits usable only within that month and, in the tariff's words, they "cannot be monetized or transferred."
Community solar can be a reasonable product for someone who wants solar attribution and cannot put panels on their roof. It is not a savings product here, and the company selling it says so in the document it filed with the Commission. We would rather quote that sentence than characterise it.
One more thing on that tariff, recorded because it is exactly what this site watches for: the income-qualified pilot inside CS-2, under which corporate sponsors cover $18.00 of the $24.00 monthly charge for households at or below 200% of the federal poverty guidelines, states "This pilot will expire December 31, 2025." Read on July 28, 2026, that date is seven months past and the tariff on file still carries the provision unamended.
Can you sell SRECs in Georgia?
No. No. Georgia has no renewable compliance standard for its utilities to meet, so nothing creates demand for a certificate a homeowner could sell — and the clearest evidence of that comes from Georgia Power's own filed tariff. The Community Solar schedule contains a clause reserving the Company's right to cancel every contract sold under it without penalty "if state or federal laws are instituted requiring Georgia Power to provide renewable resources, RECs, or otherwise meet a renewable compliance standard." A utility does not write a contingency clause for a standard that already exists. The RNR tariff, correspondingly, buys energy and not attributes: it pays for "the metered energy that is delivered by customers to the Company's electric system" and says nothing about certificates. NOT VERIFIED HERE: who holds title to the RECs associated with a Georgia residential system, and whether Georgia has a renewable portfolio standard confirmed from a statutory enumeration rather than inferred from that clause. The Attorney General's consumer page tells homeowners they "may be able to sell or get credit for renewable energy certificates" without naming a Georgia market, and adds a warning worth repeating: a home business that sells away all its RECs loses the right to tell customers it uses renewable energy.
Read from Georgia Power — Community Solar Schedule CS-2 (filed tariff) on .
What changed for Georgia in 2026
The federal residential clean energy credit (§ 25D) stopped applying. Georgia has no state solar credit to fall back on — the Department of Revenue's 2025 individual income tax instruction booklet enumerates every claimable credit code and none of them is for solar — so a Georgia homeowner buying a system in 2026 receives nothing from either government. The Solar Avoided Energy Cost component of the RNR credit also reset for the year, to 3.2188 cents per kWh.
An expansion of Georgia consumer protection law took effect giving a 30-business-day cancellation right on sales involving payments above $10,000 and a lease longer than 120 months that are — or are alleged by the seller to be — eligible for federal tax credits. After the federal § 25D repeal, that alleged-eligibility hook applies squarely to any 2026 pitch still promising a 30% credit to a buyer.
Georgia Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division — Solar Power for Your Home
Schedule RNR-11 took effect, carrying the four-cent-per-kilowatt-hour Renewable Generation Adder that the Public Service Commission approved in the 2022 rate case. The adder roughly doubles what an exported kilowatt-hour is worth on instantaneous netting, and it is the flat component — the other component, the Solar Avoided Energy Cost, is reset every year.
Georgia Power's RNR-Monthly Netting pilot — the only Georgia Power arrangement under which a month's solar exports offset a month's consumption at retail value — reached its 5,000-customer limit. The tariff now states it "is not available for additional customer participation." Every Georgia Power customer who has gone solar since is on instantaneous netting or on nothing.
The Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015 took effect, legalising third-party solar financing in Georgia for the first time. It also wrote in the ceiling that still binds: a residential system financed this way may not exceed a peak generating capacity of 10 kilowatts AC.
Georgia House Bill 57 (2015), O.C.G.A. §§ 46-3-60 to 46-3-66
Which utility you are on decides whether any of this applies
Georgia Power serves about 2.7 million customers across 155 of Georgia's 159 counties, which makes it the default assumption — but it is not everyone, and the exceptions are not small.
The Public Service Commission states that it has only "limited regulatory authority" over the state's 41 electric membership corporations and 52 municipally-owned electric systems. Georgia PSC Those 93 utilities are not on Schedule RNR-11, are not bound by its rates, and set their own solar terms — none of which we have read.
And you cannot switch. Under the Georgia Territorial Electric Service Act of 1973, retail supplier choice exists only for customers with manufacturing or commercial loads of 900 kilowatts or greater. A household takes whichever supplier the territorial map assigns. So in Georgia, unusually, "what does my utility pay for solar?" is a question with 94 possible answers and no ability to shop between them.
Buying versus leasing in Georgia
Georgia legalised third-party solar financing relatively late — 2015 — and the law it wrote is narrower than most people assume. The national picture is here, and Georgia adds three specifics on top:
- The 10 kW residential capacity limit is statutory for a system financed through a solar energy procurement agreement, not just a tariff rule.
- A solar financing agent is not an electric service provider. That is the whole point of the Act: it carves the arrangement out of the Territorial Act's exclusive service rights, so a lease or PPA is not an illegal sale of electricity.
- The Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division flags a cancellation right that turns on federal tax credits. Georgia law effective July 1, 2023 gives 30 business days to cancel sales above $10,000 involving a lease longer than 120 months that are — or are alleged by the seller to be — eligible for federal tax credits. Georgia AG After the § 25D repeal, a 2026 pitch still promising a homeowner "the 30% credit" is making exactly the kind of allegation that provision names.
What is gone
A short list, because Georgia never had much to lose at the state level — which is precisely why the federal repeal landed harder here than in Arizona or Minnesota.
Federal residential clean energy credit (§ 25D) — 30% of system cost
30% of cost
Dead — and in Georgia it was the whole tax story, because the state never replaced its own expired credit and has none today.
Who qualifies, in full
- Terminated by section 70506(a) of Public Law 119-21, enacted July 4, 2025
- An expenditure is treated as made when the original installation is completed, so paying in 2025 for a system finished in 2026 does not qualify
- Unused credit from a system completed on or before December 31, 2025 still carries forward — file Form 5695 with the 2025 return to preserve it
- Listed here because Georgia offers no state credit of any kind, so the federal repeal removed 100% of the tax support available to a Georgia homeowner rather than part of it
- Worth knowing in Georgia specifically: the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division notes a Georgia cancellation right that turns on a seller's claim of federal tax credit eligibility, so a sales pitch still promising "the 30% credit" in 2026 is both wrong and legally significant
Authority: 26 U.S.C. § 25D(h)
What we saw: Read at uscode.house.gov and matched at Cornell LII. § 25D(h): "The credit allowed under this section shall not apply with respect to any expenditures made after December 31, 2025." § 25D(e)(8)(A) treats an expenditure as made when the original installation is completed. § 25D(c) carries excess to the succeeding taxable year; 2025 Instructions for Form 5695 (dated January 22, 2026) state the unused portion carries to 2026 and that the form should be filed even if the credit cannot be used in 2025.
Administered by Internal Revenue Service.
Checked against 26 U.S.C. § 25D, U.S. Code (prelim), Office of the Law Revision Counsel on
Who is allowed to install solar in Georgia
Georgia is the first state on this site with no solar contractor licence at all — not a dedicated one like Utah's S202 or California's C-46, and not even a solar examination bolted onto another trade the way Arizona does for solar thermal. The Secretary of State's Licensing Division publishes the complete list of the boards it runs, and it includes Electrical Contractors, Low Voltage Contractors, Conditioned Air Contractors, Plumbers, Utility Contractors and Residential and Commercial General Contractors. There is no solar board and no solar classification anywhere in it, so solar work in Georgia is performed under an ordinary electrical or general contractor licence. What Georgia legislated instead is the customer's side of the transaction. The Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015 says that if your system meets the requirements set by the National Electrical Code, the National Electrical Safety Code, the IEEE and Underwriters Laboratories, your electric service provider "shall not require compliance with additional safety or performance standards, require the performance of or payment for additional tests, or require the purchase of additional liability insurance." It also requires that you or your financing agent give the utility at least 30 days' notice before the system operates, and it caps a residential system at 10 kilowatts AC — the same ceiling the RNR tariff uses. Separately, the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division states that a Georgia law effective July 1, 2023 gives a 30-business-day cancellation right on sales above $10,000 that involve a lease longer than 120 months and are, or are alleged by the seller to be, eligible for federal tax credits.
Check a company yourself: Georgia Secretary of State — Board of Electrical Contractors.
Read from Georgia House Bill 57 (2015), the Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act on .
So are solar panels worth it in Georgia in 2026?
Georgia has good sun, and rooftop solar still avoids buying retail electricity, which is where the value now sits. But this is a state where the details decide the outcome more than the sunshine does.
Three things have to go right. You have to be on Georgia Power or find out what your EMC actually offers. You have to affirmatively elect RNR rather than drifting into the default that pays nothing. And you have to size and operate the system for self-consumption, because instantaneous netting means every kilowatt-hour that leaves the property is worth about seven cents rather than cancelling a retail purchase.
Do those three things and the arithmetic can work. Miss the second one and you have bought a system that gives its surplus away — which is a failure mode particular to Georgia, entirely avoidable, and not mentioned in any national guide we have read.
What this page does not cover yet
Being explicit about the edges is part of the method. Not yet verified, and therefore not claimed here:
- How full the RNR capacity cap is. The tariff makes instantaneous netting first come, first served until installed renewables hit 0.2% of prior-year peak demand, and Georgia Power publishes no running total. For a first-come program that is a real gap, and it is the number we would most like to have.
- Georgia Power's residential retail rate. We state the export credit exactly and compare it to the tariff's own monthly-netting arrangement rather than to a retail figure we did not read.
- Sales tax and property tax treatment of a residential solar system in Georgia. Neither was verified from a primary source this pass and neither is claimed either way.
- Whether Georgia has a renewable portfolio standard, confirmed from a statutory enumeration. Our answer on certificates is inferred from a contingency clause in Georgia Power's own Community Solar tariff, which is suggestive rather than conclusive.
- Any of the 41 EMCs or 52 municipal utilities. That is 93 utilities serving a substantial share of the state, each setting its own terms, and none of them was read.
- The statutory basis for the Attorney General's 30-business-day cancellation right. The AG's page states the rule and its July 1, 2023 effective date without citing the code section.
- Georgia Power's Qualifying Facilities route, under which a system can sell some or all of its output at avoided cost, and whether it is ever the better option for a residential customer.
Each of those is queued. When one is verified it will appear above with its own date, and the change will be listed in the record.
Common questions
Does Georgia have a solar tax credit?
No. The Georgia Department of Revenue's 2025 IT-511 Individual Income Tax Instruction Booklet lists every tax credit code an individual may claim on Form 500, Schedule 2 — codes 102 through 161 — and across all sixty-nine pages the word "solar" does not appear once, nor does "energy". Georgia does have code 119, an Electric Vehicle Charger Credit, so the state will credit the charger and not the panels that would charge it. With the federal § 25D credit also gone for expenditures made after December 31, 2025, a Georgia homeowner buying a system in 2026 receives no tax credit from either government.
Does Georgia Power have net metering?
Not for new customers, and the way it ended is unusual. Georgia Power ran a 5,000-customer pilot called RNR-Monthly Netting under which a month's exports offset a month's consumption. That pilot filled, and Schedule RNR-11 now states it "is not available for additional customer participation." Existing participants keep it under a 15-year term that expires no later than December 31, 2038, it cannot be transferred between premises, and on expiry they are moved automatically to instantaneous netting. What new customers can get is RNR-Instantaneous Netting, which buys exports at a rate rather than offsetting consumption.
What does Georgia Power pay for exported solar in 2026?
7.2188 cents per kilowatt-hour, made of two published components: a Renewable Generation Credit at the Solar Avoided Energy Cost rate, which Georgia Power states is 3.2188 cents per kWh for 2026, plus a Renewable Generation Adder at a flat four cents per kWh that the Public Service Commission approved in the 2022 rate case. Both are summed monthly and applied against your total monthly bill. The 3.2188-cent component is reset every year under PSC Docket No. 16573; the four-cent adder is not. And you only get either one if you have signed an RNR Service Agreement.
What is Energy Offset Only and why does it matter?
It is Georgia Power's default for solar customers, and it pays nothing for exported energy. In Georgia Power's own words, systems on it "are not designed to push energy back onto the grid, and will not be compensated for any excess energy that is generated" — and "any customer that has solar installed behind their meter who has not elected to participate in one of our other programs, will be automatically enrolled in this program." It matters because it is what you get by omission rather than by choice. A homeowner who installs solar, passes the witness test and never signs an RNR Service Agreement will receive no credit at all for anything the system sends to the grid.
Why does "instantaneous netting" cost me money?
Because it changes what counts as an export, not just what an export is worth. Schedule RNR-11 defines Excess Energy as electricity "delivered to the grid by a Customer's generation resource at any time, which exceeds the electricity supplied by the Company to the Customer." A house drawing half a kilowatt while its array makes four is exporting three and a half kilowatts in that instant — bought at about seven cents — and will buy power back at the retail rate that evening. Under the closed monthly-netting pilot, that midday generation would have offset the evening consumption instead. The practical answer is to shift load into daylight hours and consider storage, both of which move kilowatt-hours from the export column into the self-consumption column.
Is there a size limit on residential solar in Georgia?
Yes — 10 kilowatts AC, and it appears in two places. Georgia Power's Schedule RNR-11 makes 10 kW AC the eligibility ceiling for a residential Renewable Energy Resource. Separately, the Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015 defines its "capacity limit" as ten kilowatts for a residential application, so a system financed through a lease or power purchase agreement is capped there by statute. A larger system is possible but falls outside both the RNR tariff and the third-party financing law, which is a constraint no national sizing calculator applies.
Is Georgia Power community solar worth it?
Georgia Power's own filed tariff answers this. Schedule CS-2 states: "Based on the structure of the program, a customer should anticipate the CS charges to participate in the program will exceed any bill credits received." A residential subscription is $24.00 per one-kilowatt block per month on top of your normal electricity cost, capped at ten blocks, and any excess production is credited at solar avoided cost with credits that can only be used within the month they are produced and "cannot be monetized or transferred." As a way to support solar without a suitable roof it is a real product; as a way to save money it is one the utility has told the Commission will cost more than it returns.
Can I sell SRECs in Georgia?
No, because Georgia imposes no renewable compliance obligation that would create demand for them. The clearest evidence is in Georgia Power's own Community Solar tariff, which reserves the Company's right to cancel every contract sold under it without penalty "if state or federal laws are instituted requiring Georgia Power to provide renewable resources, RECs, or otherwise meet a renewable compliance standard" — a contingency you do not write for a standard that already exists. The RNR tariff correspondingly pays for metered energy delivered to the system and says nothing about attributes. We have not verified from statute who holds title to the certificates a Georgia system generates, and we say so rather than guessing.
Who is allowed to install solar in Georgia?
Georgia has no solar contractor licence at all — no dedicated classification like Utah's S202 or California's C-46, and not even a solar examination attached to another trade the way Arizona does for solar thermal work. The Secretary of State's Licensing Division publishes the full list of boards it operates, which includes Electrical Contractors, Low Voltage Contractors, Conditioned Air Contractors, Plumbers, Utility Contractors and Residential and Commercial General Contractors, and contains no solar board and no solar classification. Solar work is therefore performed under an ordinary electrical or general contractor licence, and the licence lookup to check anyone against is the Board of Electrical Contractors.
What if my power comes from an EMC or a city utility?
Then almost nothing on this page applies to you, and you cannot switch. Georgia Power serves about 2.7 million customers in 155 of Georgia's 159 counties, but the Public Service Commission states it has only "limited regulatory authority" over the state's 41 electric membership corporations and 52 municipally-owned electric systems. Those 93 utilities are not on Schedule RNR-11 and set their own solar terms, which we have not read. Under the Georgia Territorial Electric Service Act of 1973 a retail supplier choice exists only for customers with loads of 900 kilowatts or greater, so a household takes whichever supplier the territorial map assigns. Ask your own utility what it pays for exports before you sign anything.
Are solar panels worth it in Georgia in 2026?
It can work, but three things have to go right and the second one is the one people miss. You have to know what your utility actually offers, because 93 of Georgia's 94 electric suppliers are not on Georgia Power's tariff. You have to affirmatively elect RNR-Instantaneous Netting rather than drifting into the default that pays nothing for exports. And you have to size and operate the system for self-consumption, because instantaneous netting values an exported kilowatt-hour at about seven cents rather than letting it cancel a retail purchase. With no state credit and no federal credit, the return now comes almost entirely from electricity you generate and use yourself — so shifting load into daylight, and considering storage, matter more here than the panel count does.
Primary sources
Every one of these was opened and read on the date shown. None of it is copied from DSIRE, EnergySage, or any other aggregator.
- Georgia Power — Schedule RNR-11, filed tariff read July 28, 2026
- Georgia Power — Residential Rooftop Solar, How It Works read July 28, 2026
- Georgia Power — Community Solar Schedule CS-2, filed tariff read July 28, 2026
- 26 U.S.C. § 25D, U.S. Code (prelim), Office of the Law Revision Counsel read July 28, 2026
- Georgia House Bill 57 (2015), the Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act read July 28, 2026