Every claim on this page checked against primary sources on July 28, 2026

Utah solar incentives

Utah is the state where both governments stopped paying. The federal 30% credit ended December 31, 2025, and Utah's own residential credit for photovoltaic systems reached zero two years before that — $400 for a system installed in 2023, and nothing at all for one installed on or after January 1, 2024. Utah also has no sales tax exemption a homeowner can use, because the state's alternative-energy exemption only reaches facilities of two megawatts or greater. What is left is real but much smaller: a battery incentive from Rocky Mountain Power, an export credit worth roughly a third of retail, and a state credit that still pays 25% for solar water heating while paying nothing for solar panels.

Why "net billing" is the most important phrase on this page

Utah does not have net metering for new customers, and the difference is where most of the money went. Under retail net metering — the arrangement most national guides still assume — a kilowatt-hour you export is worth exactly what a kilowatt-hour you buy costs. Under Utah's net billing schedule, an exported kilowatt-hour is credited at a fixed seasonal rate that is a fraction of retail, while every kilowatt-hour you draw from the grid is still billed at your normal tariff.

Two practical consequences follow, and neither is obvious from a national payback calculator:

• Self-consumption is worth far more than export. Electricity used in the house as it is generated offsets the full retail rate. The same electricity sent to the grid earns the export credit. That spread is the single strongest argument for pairing storage with panels in Utah, and it is independent of any incentive.
• Oversizing is punished. Credits roll month to month but expire at the annual true-up with no cash payment, so a system deliberately built larger than the home's annual use donates the surplus. Schedule 137, Special Condition 4

Do you pay sales tax on solar in Utah?

Yes. This is one of the sharpest contrasts with states that exempt solar equipment outright, and it catches people who have read a national guide.

Utah does have an alternative-energy sales tax exemption, and solar energy is squarely inside its definition of alternative energy — but the exemption attaches to an "alternative energy electricity production facility," and Utah Code § 59-12-102(13) defines that as a facility that uses alternative energy to produce electricity and "has a production capacity of two megawatts or greater." Utah Code § 59-12-102(13) A residential rooftop array is roughly two to three orders of magnitude below that line. The exemption is written for utility-scale projects and a house does not reach it, so a Utah homeowner pays sales tax on the equipment at the applicable state and local rate.

The part that is still worth money to people who already installed

Utah's PV credit is dead for new systems, but it was never repealed — it was zeroed. The rest of the section still functions, and that matters for anyone who installed before 2024 and could not use the whole credit against one year of Utah tax.

Section 59-10-1014(4)(e) allows unused credit to be carried forward for a period not exceeding the next four taxable years, and the Utah State Tax Commission says the same thing plainly: the residential solar credit expired effective 2023, and carryforwards are allowed through 2027. Utah State Tax Commission A 2023 installation was the last eligible one, at a $400 cap — modest, but it is real money that a household with low Utah liability in 2023 may still be entitled to use.

The same shape exists federally and is larger: a system completed on or before December 31, 2025 keeps its 30% credit, and an unused portion carries into 2026 and beyond — but only if Form 5695 was filed with the 2025 return. That is covered in full here, and it is the single most commonly missed item in the whole repeal.

So are solar panels worth it in Utah in 2026?

This is the state where the honest answer has changed the most, and where a national payback figure is most likely to be wrong.

Utah has excellent sun and, for the first time in nearly two decades, no tax credit of any kind for a homeowner who buys panels. Both of the mechanisms that used to carry the case are gone at once, and the third — the value of exported electricity — is set by a schedule that pays a fraction of retail and expires unused credits annually. Nothing in that sentence was true in 2023.

What is left favors a particular shape of project: a system sized to the home's own consumption rather than to its roof, oriented toward using its output directly, and paired with storage that earns the Wattsmart incentive and closes the gap between the retail rate and the export credit. That is a different recommendation from "cover the roof and sell the surplus," which is what retail net metering used to reward and what much of the market is still selling.

The ownership question cuts strangely here too, and Utah is a good illustration of why the buy-versus-lease answer is not uniform. Federal law now favors third-party ownership. Rocky Mountain Power's battery incentive requires you to own the equipment. And Utah's surviving state credit runs the other way from both: § 59-10-1014(4)(g) lets a lessee claim it where the lessor irrevocably elects not to, limited to the principal recovery portion of the payments. Three programs in one state, three different ownership rules — the same pattern Minnesota showed, pointing in different directions.

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:

• Property tax treatment of a home solar array in Utah. We could not find a solar-specific exemption in the Tax Commission's own material, but "Utah has no solar property tax exemption" is a negative claim that needs the assessment statute read before it is worth printing. Until then this page says nothing about it either way.
• Municipal utility programs. Utah has several city-owned electric utilities, and customers of those utilities are not on Rocky Mountain Power's Schedule 137 at all. None of their terms were read this pass, so the net billing section above may not describe your bill.
• The statutory detail of the commercial credit at Utah Code § 59-7-614. The 10% and $50,000 figures come from the Office of Energy Development's own page, which is primary for its own program, but the statute itself was not read.
• Whether an S202 licensee must hold a NABCEP certificate. Secondary material about the application says so; the administrative rule that defines the S202 scope of practice does not, and the rule is the authority.
• Low-income and weatherization routes. Not examined this pass.

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.