Buying solar panels in South Carolina

What changed in South Carolina, and why older advice is wrong

Three things moved in sequence, and together they reset the arithmetic. One-for-one net metering closed to new applicants on 1 June 2021. Full-retail grandfathering for customers who applied before 16 May 2019 ran out on 31 December 2025. And the federal residential credit expired for systems placed in service on or after 1 January 2026.

The practical result is that payback in South Carolina is longer than the figures still published on national comparison sites, which mostly have not been updated. If you are working from an article that applies a 30% federal credit, the net cost it shows you is wrong by thousands of dollars. It is the first thing to check on anything you read, including a quote.

What did not change is the 25% South Carolina state credit on Form TC-38, capped at $3,500 in any one tax year and at 50% of your state liability, with a ten-year carry-forward. Because of that annual cap, most residential systems are claimed across two or three returns rather than recovered at once. Confirm your own eligibility with a tax professional.

None of this makes solar a bad decision here. It makes it a decision that has to be worked rather than assumed, and one where which utility bills you now matters more than it ever has.

The questions that make a salesperson uncomfortable

What is the price per watt? Take the total installed price, divide by the system’s DC watts, and compare against the South Carolina benchmark of around $2.59 per watt before incentives as of July 2026. It is the only comparison that survives between quotes for different system sizes.

Are there dealer or financing fees in that figure? A cash price and a financed price for the same system are frequently different, and the gap is often several thousand dollars buried in the financing arrangement rather than shown as a fee.

Who performs the installation, and are they employees? A large share of residential solar in the Southeast is sold by one company and installed by a subcontractor. It is a fair question and it is easy to answer honestly.

Who holds the workmanship warranty, and what specifically does it cover? Manufacturer warranties attach to equipment and generally survive a company going out of business. Workmanship warranties do not. Given how many installers from the last fifteen years are no longer trading, that distinction is worth understanding before you sign rather than after.

The questions that are awkward for us too

Ask what the production estimate is in kilowatt-hours, and what export rate and rate-escalation assumption sit behind the savings figure. A dollars-saved headline embeds both, and two quotes can differ by tens of thousands over twenty-five years purely on those assumptions while proposing near-identical hardware.

Ask whether the quote applies a federal credit. It should not, for any system placed in service on or after 1 January 2026. Ask how the 25% state credit has been applied, and whether it has been spread across tax years to respect the $3,500 annual cap and the 50% liability limit.

Ask what happens if your production comes in below estimate, and what the remedy is. And ask directly whether there is a case in which the company would advise against the system. An installer who has never told a customer no is either extraordinarily lucky in their leads or is not telling anyone.

How to use these pages

Start with your town rather than the state. Every page below is grouped by the utility that serves it, because that is the variable doing the most work, and a statewide average is a number that applies to nobody in particular.

Then check the assumption behind any figure you are comparing. Two quotes for a similar system can differ enormously on their twenty-five year totals purely because of what each assumed about export credits and rate escalation, and neither assumption is usually stated on the front page.

If your town is not listed, it is worth asking rather than assuming we do not cover it. We install statewide from a Daniel Island office, and the page list reflects where we have enough verified local detail to publish something useful rather than the limit of where we work.

What we need to give you a real number

Twelve months of electricity usage. Not one bill, twelve. A system sized from a summer peak is oversized for the year and one sized from a mild month disappoints every August, and neither error is visible until the system is on the roof. Twelve months also shows us the shape of your consumption across the day, which is what determines how much of your own production you will actually use rather than export.

Confirmation of who serves your meter, read off the bill rather than inferred from your address. In the Charleston metro especially, territory boundaries run between streets, and modelling the wrong provider produces a confident answer to the wrong question.

Some idea of your roof: its age, its covering, and whether anything has grown up around it since you moved in. Roof age is the detail that most often changes our recommendation, because installing over a roof with a few years left means paying to remove and reinstall the array later.

And your own horizon. A household planning to move within a few years is making a resale decision rather than a payback decision, and those are different questions with genuinely different answers. Telling us early saves everyone a survey.

With those four things we can give you figures rather than a projection built on averages. Without them, anyone quoting you a payback period is guessing with a straight face.

Common questions

How do I compare solar quotes fairly?

Compare price per watt rather than totals, against roughly $2.59 per watt installed before incentives in South Carolina as of July 2026. Then check what export rate and escalation assumption sit behind each savings figure, because that is usually where two quotes actually differ.

What are dealer fees?

Costs folded into a financed price that do not appear in a cash price for the same system. They are often several thousand dollars and are usually not shown as a line item. Ask for both prices.

Does a workmanship warranty survive the installer going out of business?

Generally no. Manufacturer warranties attach to the equipment and usually survive; workmanship warranties depend on the company still trading. Given how many South Carolina installers from the last fifteen years have closed, that distinction matters.

Should a 2026 quote include the federal tax credit?

No. It expired for systems placed in service on or after 1 January 2026. A quote applying it is out of date by thousands of dollars.

What is a fair question to ask any installer?

Whether there is a case in which they would advise against the system. Anyone who has never told a customer no is either very lucky in their leads or is not telling anyone.