Editor’s note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

Solar Optimum, a company that works throughout the West, is experiencing a “surge” in website visits, home evaluations and signed contracts — all because of a tax credit change in the One Big Beautiful Bill that advocates worry could kneecap the industry.

With President Donald Trump signing the reconciliation bill July 4, the 30% credit on residential solar previously scheduled to start sunsetting in 2033 will come to a screeching halt at the end of this year. Now, Nevadans are rushing to install before the deadline, and Solar Optimum is working extended hours to meet the demand.

“Anytime there’s a deadline tied to financial incentives, urgency increases — and that’s exactly what we’re seeing now,” said Kyle Smith, general manager with Solar Optimum in a statement. “Solar customers, in particular, are savvy. They understand the value of acting now, while the credits are still available.”

In 2023, Nevada had the highest rate of tax returns claiming a residential clean energy credit of any state in the country, according to IRS data. The nearly 27,000 filings resulted in $137 million in credits.

The end of the tax credit will “be a big setback for families looking to make a cost-effective energy transition,” said Chauntille Roberts, regional director of nonprofit Vote Solar. “There possibly (could) be a general divestment from rooftop solar because of that.”

Solar Optimum is now advertising throughout the state to spread the word about the upcoming deadline, but the influx of customers came before that campaign started, Smith said.

Mark Dickson, president of Northern Nevada’s Simple Power Solar, took the opposite approach as his company’s leads tripled over the past few weeks.

Simple Power killed its marketing spend both to save money — and because the company doesn’t need it. Its project queue for the year will likely fill up “in the next few weeks,” Dickson said.

“It’s going to be a huge year for residential,” he said. “Then next year, it’s going to be a ghost town.”

Simple Power is part of a cooperative of over 80 solar companies throughout the country. Dickson said he and the other owners have regular calls discussing the industry and “everybody’s in this kind of shock going, ‘Oh, it can’t get much worse,’ and then it gets worse.”

“All of us agree, for the most part, that, ‘OK, we can do without this tax credit.’ It was a good crutch for us to get going in the beginning,” he said. “I’m ready to get rid of it, but we just need an exit strategy. We need an off ramp. We need a plan for this over the next few years.”

‘The industry did it to themselves’

Stephen Hamile, chief operating officer at Sol-Up, is a self-described contrarian when it comes to the damage that will be done by removing the tax credit. He’d prefer if the government gradually ramped down the program instead but said it will put an end to some of the scammier practices in the industry.

Door-to-door salesmen have used the tax break to overhype how much money people can save with a solar power system, according to a senior attorney with the Federal Trade Commission.

Consumers reported losing over a quarter-billion dollars in “solar-related complaints” from 2022 to the middle of June 2024, former FTC Chair Lina Khan said last year, and the rate of complaints was growing.

Concerns about shady business practices coming out of the residential tax credit was all Hamile heard when lobbying D.C. lawmakers, he said, but the solar executive didn’t have a retort.

“The industry did it to themselves,” Hamile said. “The perception of (the tax credit) that was circulated through Congress was earned, and it was earned by many of the bad actors in the marketplace. I’m not saying that all door knockers are bad actors, but if it sounds too good to be true, it is.”

Scrapping the entire credit is “absolutely” throwing the baby out with the bathwater, though, said Julia Hubbard, Nevada program director with advocacy group Solar United Neighbors.

“If we really care about affordability, we should be incentivizing clean energy and trying to put as much clean energy on the grid as possible,” Hubbard said. “We’ve got tremendous load growth projected, and renewables are the fastest and cheapest way to get more energy out there.”

The remaining tax credits could also open the industry to abuse, Hamile said. While the leased solar credit will run through 2027, the same credit for battery storage will end in 2032, according to Solar.com.

The incentives could lead to people shifting their prices to the battery while throwing in a “free” solar system to maximize the credit, Hamile said.

The vague definition of battery also opens up a possible loophole where people cram as much technology as possible into it while still accessing the credit, Hamile said, adding that he’s not necessarily opposed to those improvements.

Energy storage will help the grid’s stability, he said, but the language around the tax break just “wasn’t very thoughtfully crafted.”

Smith wrote that demand for batteries is increasing and will likely continue to do so after the “solar-only” credits expire, but that it’s for “creating a more resilient, future-ready home,” not “gaming the system.”

Can Nevada step in?

Nevada’s budget problems are no secret, but some in the industry want the state to help them weather the possible storm associated with the popular tax break’s sudden end.

Smith said his company would like to see Nevada fill the newly created gap, whether that be through a state-level solar tax credit, rebate or property tax exemption for homes with solar. That would help the industry maintain its momentum, he wrote.

“Nevada has a huge opportunity to lead the way in solar energy, but we need thoughtful policy to maintain affordability and keep solar within reach for the average homeowner,” he said.

Hubbard said Nevada should expand its community solar program, where people can buy into a larger solar project and reap its benefits along with the other people funding it.

“There’s a lot of people who cannot install rooftop solar on their house or are renters and don’t have access to that,” Hubbard said. “They’d like to subscribe to an array and then receive a percentage savings on their bill from the solar that the array is producing and sharing with the grid.”

Hubbard and her organization are also trying to stop the state from further disincentivizing rooftop solar by accepting NV Energy’s rate case before the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada. Along with a rate hike, it would drastically change net metering.

Instead of calculating credits at the end of the month, NV Energy is proposing a 15-minute window. Currently, energy produced during the day can balance out usage when it’s dark or cloudy by the end of the month, but customers under the new plan would get that credit every 15 minutes at 75% of the market rate. Existing solar users would be exempt from the change.

NV Energy has argued that the current system has non-solar owners subsidizing those who do have the technology.

“The current payback period in Nevada is about 10 years,” Hubbard said. “By changing the netting window, you’re going to see longer payback periods, and so that’s going to disincentivize people from going solar.”

kyle.chouinard@gmg vegas.com / 702-990-8923 / @Kyle_Chouinard