Is solar worth it in your South Carolina town?

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 four things that actually decide it

What your utility credits exports at. Where that credit sits well below retail, the value of a system shifts towards the power you consume as you generate it, which changes the sensible size and makes storage a real question rather than an upsell.

How much production you can use on site. A household at home during the day, or with electric water heating, a pool pump or an EV charging in daylight, converts far more of its generation at the higher value than one that is out from eight to six. This is usually the largest single difference between two otherwise identical homes.

Roof condition and shading. Mature tree cover that clears in winter can substantially shade a roof in July, so shade has to be modelled across the year. A roof with only a few years left means paying to remove and reinstall the array later, which normally costs more than re-roofing first.

How long you will stay. Payback in South Carolina now runs longer than the figures on national comparison sites suggest. If you are moving within a few years, the question becomes resale rather than payback, and the honest evidence on solar and resale value is far less settled than the industry implies.

Who solar does not suit here

We publish the negative list because it is the one a person genuinely deciding actually needs, and almost nobody prints it. Low annual electricity spend is the clearest case: if the bill being displaced is small, the system has little work to do and the capital is better used elsewhere.

Heavy, unavoidable shading is the second. Removing mature trees to make an array work is a trade some households are happy with and many are not, and it should be an explicit decision made in advance rather than a conclusion reached after a deposit.

A near end-of-life roof is the third, unless you are willing to re-roof first. And a short expected stay is the fourth, for the reasons above.

If you recognise your own situation in that list, a fifteen-minute conversation will save you a survey. We would rather have it early.

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

Is solar worth it in South Carolina in 2026?

It is a harder case than it was: the federal credit expired and one-for-one net metering has been closed to new applicants since 1 June 2021, but it is still a good decision for many homes. It depends on your export credit, how much production you use on site, your roof and shading, and how long you will stay.

Why is payback longer than national sites say?

Because most national comparison content has not been updated for the 2026 changes and still applies a 30% federal credit and full-retail net metering. Neither applies to a new South Carolina system now.

Who should not install solar?

Households with low annual electricity spend, roofs with heavy unavoidable shading, roofs near end of life where the owner will not re-roof first, and anyone moving within a few years. We publish this list because it is the one a person actually deciding needs.

Does solar add to my home’s resale value?

The evidence is far less settled than the industry implies and varies by market and by whether the system is owned outright. We would rather say that than quote a figure we cannot support.

How much of my own solar power will I use?

It depends on your daily pattern. A household at home during daylight, or with electric water heating, a pool pump or daytime EV charging, uses far more of its own generation, which matters because exported power is credited well below retail in most of our territory.