Net Metering Is Changing State by State. Here Is What Yours Looks Like.

Net metering is the simple-sounding policy that lets your meter run backwards. When your panels produce more than your house uses, the excess flows to the grid, your meter spins down, and at the end of the month you are billed for the net consumption. For two decades, this was the dominant model in the United States.

The simple version, called full retail net metering, credits every exported kilowatt-hour at the same retail rate you pay to buy one. It is the most generous policy for solar owners and, as utilities have argued for years, it shifts grid maintenance costs onto non-solar customers. That argument has finally landed in regulators' offices, and the policy is changing almost everywhere.

California led the retreat. NEM 3.0, which took effect in April 2023, replaced retail net metering with an avoided-cost rate that pays roughly 75% less for exported power. New California solar customers who did not pair their system with a battery saw their payback period jump from about 6 years to 10 or 12 years overnight. The lesson the rest of the country took from this is that solar and batteries are now the same product.

Hawaii ended traditional net metering back in 2015 and went through several successor programs. The current Customer Grid-Supply Plus program pays a fixed rate well below retail, and most new installations are designed around self-consumption with batteries.

Arizona, Nevada, and Florida have all walked back their net metering programs in the last five years, with utility-friendly successor tariffs that make economics tighter but still workable. In Nevada, the current rate structure pays about 75% of retail for exports, which is better than California's NEM 3.0 but worse than the old one-for-one math.

On the other side, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, and Maryland still have generally favorable net metering policies, often combined with SREC markets that pay separately for the environmental attributes of each megawatt-hour produced. New Jersey's SREC II program currently pays around $85 per megawatt-hour for ten years, which can add $800 to $1,200 a year to a typical residential system's revenue.

Texas is the wild west. There is no statewide net metering policy. Each utility sets its own rules, and the retail electric providers in deregulated areas like Houston and Dallas offer competing solar buyback plans. Octopus Energy, Rhythm, and Green Mountain all have solar-friendly products. The differences between providers can be larger than the difference between net metering and no net metering elsewhere.

Before you sign a quote, ask the installer four questions. What net metering tariff am I signed up for? Is it grandfathered if the rules change? When does the rate-lock period end? And what does the export rate become after that? If the installer fumbles any of these, find a different installer who has read your utility's actual tariff document. It is public, it is usually 40 pages long, and a competent local installer can quote chapter and verse.