Fairfax County Solar Incentives 2026: What Is Left After the Tax Credit

Section 25D, the Residential Clean Energy Credit, does not apply to systems installed after December 31, 2025. The statute ties the cutoff to the date the original installation is completed, so the installation date controls, not the contract or payment date. A home system installed in 2026 carries no federal homeowner credit, and a proposal that still shows one is out of date.

We price without it. The $2.40–$2.85/W cash band on our solar pages is the installed number for modules, racking, inverter, and interconnection labor, and nothing in it assumes a credit that no longer exists. A competitor who quotes a "net of credit" price on a 2026 home install is showing you a number you cannot reach.

We sell cash and loan installs, and here is the reason in one sentence: with a lease or PPA, the company owns the array, the SRECs, and the escalator clause, and you own a 20 to 25 year contract that follows the house. With a cash or financed purchase you own the equipment, every SREC, the net metering credits, and the property tax exemption, and the payback math below is yours. If a lease still fits your situation, read the FTC guidance on solar contracts before you sign, and check who owns the panels when you sell the home.

Rental and business property is a separate case. A system on rental or business-owned property may qualify for the Section 48E commercial investment credit if it is placed in service by December 31, 2027. The credit follows ownership of the system, not who pays the electric bill. Confirm it with a CPA before you count on it.

Dominion asked the State Corporation Commission to replace annual net metering with half-hour netting and an export credit rate, to take ownership of customer renewable energy certificates, and to add application fees. The Commission's final order in case PUR-2025-00079, entered April 30, 2026, kept the program that matters to a Fairfax homeowner.

Four points from the order. Excess kilowatt-hours you send to the grid are still credited one to one against kilowatt-hours you buy, netted over a twelve-month period. The SRECs your array earns stay yours, and the order says plainly that the company does not own the RECs created by customer generators. New net metering customers pay an administrative charge of $1 per month. Any excess that is still on the account at the end of the twelve-month period is cashed out at $0.05829 per kilowatt-hour, which is the avoided cost rate, so a system sized to your usage keeps its value inside the retail credit. Under the net metering tariff Dominion filed with the Commission on July 30, 2026, interconnection applications approved before May 1, 2027 stay on the current terms. Applications approved on or after that date move to the new terms, and so does an existing system that adds capacity or a battery or changes hands to a new owner.

The practical rule is unchanged: size the array to the bill, not past it. Dominion limits residential systems to 150 percent of expected annual consumption, and the year-end cash-out rate is a fraction of the retail rate, so the last few panels past your usage are the least valuable ones on the roof.

A solar renewable energy certificate is created every time your array produces 1,000 kilowatt-hours. Virginia utilities have to retire a growing number of them under the Virginia Clean Economy Act, so they buy them from homeowners through brokers and exchanges. A 10 kW array modeled at about 12,500 kWh a year earns about 12 SRECs a year. You register the system once, the meter reports production, and the broker pays you as the certificates sell.

Prices move. The Flett Exchange Virginia board priced the 2026 vintage at $17.00 on September 24, 2026, with older vintages from 2022 to 2025 between $10.00 and $16.50. At the 2026 price the modeled 10 kW array earns about $204 a year in certificates. The SCC order confirmed the certificates belong to you, which is one more reason to own the array rather than lease it.

Fairfax County Land Development Services waives the permit fee for residential solar. The residential solar permit is still a real permit with plan review and inspection, and we pull it, but the county does not charge for it. The county's Going Solar page is the official statement of the waiver.

The Department of Tax Administration exempts certified solar energy equipment from real estate tax for five years. The application is the county's solar energy equipment certification form. Submit the completed form with the permit application at the Permit Application Center, 12055 Government Center Parkway. After the installation passes inspection, Land Development Services forwards the certification to the Department of Tax Administration. The Department calculates the exemption value from the installed cost and sends a confirmation letter. There is no fee to apply. We include the form in the permit package for every Fairfax County install so the exemption starts with the first assessment after the inspection.

The City of Fairfax is an independent city with its own permit office and its own tax exemption. Inside the city the solar energy equipment exemption runs ten years instead of five. The city's tax exemption page carries the term and the application. If your mailing address says Fairfax, the parcel record settles which one applies, and we confirm it before the permit is filed so the right form goes in with the right office.

Both exemptions rest on Virginia Code 58.1-3661, the state law that lets localities exempt certified solar energy equipment from property tax, and it covers residential systems up to 25 kilowatts.

Virginia does not publish a residential sales-tax exemption for solar equipment; the county permit fee waiver, the property tax exemption, and net metering are the confirmed incentives.

Dominion serves most of Fairfax County, but NOVEC, the Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative, serves large parts of Centreville, Chantilly, Clifton, Fairfax Station, western Burke, and parts of Lorton and Springfield. NOVEC runs its own net metering program under the same state statute, with its own interconnection application and its own terms for excess generation. The SCC order on Dominion does not govern NOVEC. We confirm the serving utility from your bill on the first call, file the interconnection with the right utility, and size the array to that utility's rules. A NOVEC address still gets the Fairfax County permit fee waiver and the property tax exemption, because those are county programs, not utility programs.

Dominion's Virtual Power Plant is a battery program, not a solar program, and it is worth knowing about before you decide whether to add a battery to the array. Dominion filed the pilot on December 1, 2025, launches it in 2026 subject to approval, and runs it through July 1, 2028. Enrolled home batteries let Dominion draw on stored energy during peak demand events, and Dominion says most customers join at no cost and can earn credits or payments for taking part. If backup power is on your list, the pilot turns the battery from a pure resilience purchase into one with a small annual return, and the array charges it for free on every sunny day.

This is a modeled estimate for a 10 kW array at our published band, with the assumptions in the open so you can swap in your own bill. The model assumes about 1,250 kWh per kW per year for a Northern Virginia roof, so a 10 kW array is modeled at about 12,500 kWh. At the Virginia average residential rate of about 17 cents per kWh published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), that production is worth $2,153 a year on the bill, credited one to one under net metering as long as the array is sized to your usage.

Modeled simple payback without SRECs: $24,000–$28,500 divided by $2,153 a year is 11.1 to 13.2 years. With SRECs at the September 2026 price, add $204 a year and the range tightens to 10.2 to 12.1 years.

Two things move the result more than anything else. Your rate: the number on your bill is the number to use, and Dominion's base rates rose on January 1, 2026 with a second step on January 1, 2027, which shortens the payback. Your roof: shade, orientation, and a north-facing slope cut production, which is why the site visit runs a shade analysis before we write a number. A panel upgrade, a battery, or an EV charger is itemized separately on the proposal and has its own value, so it does not belong in this payback line.

Every program above links to its official page in the Sources block at the end of this guide, and each figure was checked on 2026-09-05. Rates, SREC prices, and utility programs change; the page you are reading carries the date it was last reviewed, and the written proposal carries the numbers for your address on the day you sign. The typical 8 to 12 kW rooftop band on our solar pages is $19,000–$34,000 at $2.40–$2.85/W, cash.