A home solar solution inherently offers you a series of benefits, including energy independence, reduced carbon footprint, and tens of thousands of dollars in utility bill savings. However, in a bid to make the financial benefits even more attractive, the federal and state governments are offering several monetary incentives for home solar buyers.
For Easton, PA homeowners, this means a windfall of financial benefits that will make their solar installation a highly profitable investment. Some of these incentives offer consistent savings and earnings for several years, if not decades, to come.
Most Easton, PA residents qualify for the following government incentives when they purchase a new home solar solution.
Federal Income Tax Credit
The investment tax credit (ITC) offered by the federal government allows solar buyers – both residential and commercial – to deduct up to 26% of the cost of the solar energy system from their annual income taxes.
There is absolutely no cap on the deduction amount. The only limitation is your income tax liability. As long as your income taxes are big enough to fully deduct 26% of the value of your solar energy system, you can avail the full amount.
Net Metering
Net metering is an ingenious solar incentive that rewards solar customers for the amount of excess solar energy they sell to the utility company.
Consider this: your solar panels produce power during the day when you use the least amount of it. After sundown, your solar panels stop working just when you need them the most. So, what do you do?
Grid-tied solar energy systems solve this problem by allowing you to divert excess solar energy produced during the day to the grid. At night, you can draw power from the grid.
Under this system, your monthly utility power bill will be calculated after offsetting the solar power you sent to the utility company. In other words, you can sell solar power to the utility company at the same rate they charge you.
Solar Renewable Energy Credits
SRECs are performance-based incentives offered to solar customers. For every 1,000 kWh of power generated by your solar solution, you earn 1 SREC. These SRECs are tradeable in the Pennsylvania SREC market, where they will fetch good money. In early 2022, the Pennsylvania SRECs are trading at about $38.
To give you a sense of how much money you can make with SRECs, let’s say you have a 5kW solar panel system. You’ll likely earn about 6 SRECs with such a system, which could mean about $228 in annual incentives going by the current rate.
These SRECs are currently granted for 15 years from the day of your solar installation.
