Maybe someone sat at your kitchen table and walked you through the numbers. Maybe the bill you get now doesn't look like the one you were shown. If you sometimes wonder whether going solar was worth it, that's a fair question, and asking it doesn't mean you did anything wrong.
This post isn't about your price or your contract. Only your own paperwork can answer those questions. It's about the other reasons solar made sense, the ones that never show up on a monthly statement.
It can count when you sell
The best-known study on this comes from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Researchers looked at almost 23,000 home sales in eight states from 2002 to 2013, about 4,000 of them with solar. On average, buyers paid about $4 more per watt of solar, roughly $15,000 for an average system of that time (3.6 kW). A Zillow analysis of homes sold nationwide in 2018 and early 2019 found that homes with solar sold for about 4.1% more than comparable homes without it, and the figure varied by market.
Those are averages from other places and other years, not a promise for your home. Zillow also noted that homes with solar may have other features that are hard to measure, which can play a part in the price. A few things make a real difference:
- Who owns the system. The Berkeley Lab study looked only at systems the homeowners owned. If you lease your system or buy its power under an agreement (a PPA, a power purchase agreement: you pay for the power, not the panels), you don't own it, and the contract can shape a sale, for example whether a buyer can take it over. The FTC's guide to home solar lists the questions to ask. Your contract holder or a real estate professional can tell you how yours works.
- Whether it works. The same study found buyers valued systems less as they got older. A system that's running, with records to show it, is a simpler story to tell a buyer than one nobody has looked at in years.
It makes power right where it's used
Most electricity travels a long way to reach a house, and some of it is lost on the way. Across the U.S., about 5% of electricity was lost in transmission and distribution lines on average from 2018 to 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Power from your roof is used in your home first, and what you don't need flows out to the lines on your street.
It also comes at a useful time. U.S. electricity demand tends to peak in July or August, when air conditioning runs hardest. Your panels make the most power in the middle of sunny days, through our long, hot summer afternoons. To be fair, demand often stays high into the evening, after the panels wind down. Solar covers part of that hot stretch, not all of it.
What about your neighbors' bills?
You may have heard that rooftop solar raises costs for everyone else. In Nevada, that question has been argued for more than a decade, and careful people have landed in different places:
- 2014: a study done for the state's utility regulator found that, going forward, the cost or benefit to customers without solar was likely to be small either way. It also found a real cost shift from systems installed before 2014, mostly because of the incentive program at the time.
- 2015: the regulator ruled that net metering (how the power company credits the extra power your panels send to the grid) was shifting costs to other customers in an unfair way, and changed the rates for solar customers.
- 2017: state lawmakers brought net metering back for new customers, with credits that step down as more solar is added.
We won't pretend that's settled. If you'd like to know how the credits on your own bill work, here's net metering, explained.
It's part of a lot of local work
In 2024, Nevada had 8,510 solar jobs, according to the National Solar Jobs Census from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. That was the 7th most of any state, and the most per person for the fourth year in a row. Nationwide, the count was 280,119. Every system on a roof here took people to design it, install it, inspect it and keep it running. Yours is part of that work.
It brought a closer look at your home's wiring
Solar connects to your home's main electrical panel, and the electrical code limits how much solar a panel can take, based on its rating. On older or smaller panels, that sometimes meant a new main panel as part of the install. Your install paperwork should show what was done at your home.
A permitted system also had to pass inspection before it was turned on. In Clark County, for example, the inspection guide says a system "shall not be energized prior to final inspection."
That kind of look matters most in older homes. A study by the Fire Protection Research Foundation found that problems in older wiring can be hard to see, and it recommends a thorough inspection by qualified electricians and inspectors when an older system is expanded or repaired. Solar doesn't make a home safe from fire, and we'd never say it does. It was simply one more time someone qualified checked the wiring.
The value holds when the system keeps working
Every one of these depends on your panels actually making power. A system that has quietly stopped working does none of it.
That's the part we help with. Solar Care Monitoring watches your system 24/7, and our team calls you when it goes down. Adopt Your System puts our local team in charge of it, any brand, including systems whose installer is no longer around. If you sell, the membership transfers to the new homeowner. And if you'd just like to know where things stand, start with a check-up.
Whatever you paid, and however you feel about the deal, the panels are on your roof now. Keeping them working is how you get the good out of them.
Sources
- Selling Into the Sun, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, January 2015
- Zillow analysis of homes with solar, reported by Solar Power World, April 2019
- Solar Power for Your Home, Federal Trade Commission, April 2022
- Electricity lost in transmission and distribution, U.S. Energy Information Administration, updated November 2023
- Hourly electricity demand peaked in July, U.S. Energy Information Administration, October 2024
- Nevada Net Energy Metering Impacts Evaluation, prepared for the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada, July 2014
- The 2015 net metering decision, This Is Reno, January 2016
- NRS 704.7732, net metering credits, Nevada Revised Statutes
- National Solar Jobs Census 2024, jobs by state, Interstate Renewable Energy Council, November 2025
- Solar field plan review and inspection guide, Clark County
- Study examines aging wiring in old homes, Electrical Contractor, August 2008
Last checked October 30, 2026. Figures are from the dates shown and may have been updated since.