Short answer: yes, solar can still be worth it in Florida in 2026 — but the math has changed, and anyone quoting you a “30% federal tax credit” on a home solar purchase is working from stale information. The federal residential clean energy credit (Internal Revenue Code §25D) was terminated for expenditures made after December 31, 2025. What has not changed: Florida still charges no sales tax on residential solar equipment, your property taxes do not go up when panels add value to your home, and Florida’s largest utilities — FPL, Duke Energy Florida, and TECO — still credit the solar power you export at the full retail rate today. Add one of the strongest solar resources in the continental United States and hardware prices that are far lower than a decade ago, and the honest 2026 answer is: it depends on your utility, your electric usage, your roof, and how long you plan to stay in the home. For some Florida households the numbers still work clearly; for others they no longer do. This article walks through exactly what expired, what survived, and how to run the math for your own house — without the marketing gloss.
The federal incentive most homeowners knew about was the residential clean energy credit under Section 25D of the tax code — commonly called “the 30% solar tax credit.” Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025, that credit was terminated for residential expenditures made after December 31, 2025.
In practical terms: if you are a homeowner buying a solar system outright or with a loan in 2026, there is no federal tax credit on that purchase. This is not a phase-down or a reduced percentage — for homeowner-purchased residential systems, the credit is gone.
Two things to watch for as a Florida consumer:
The federal credit was never the whole story in Florida. Three state-level fundamentals are still in place in 2026:
Solar energy systems are exempt from Florida’s 6% state sales tax. On a typical residential system this is a four-figure saving that comes off the price automatically — no forms, no waiting for tax season.
Florida law excludes 100% of the value a residential renewable-energy device adds to your home from your property-tax assessment. Your panels can raise what your home is worth without raising what you pay the county each year.
FPL, Duke Energy Florida, and TECO still credit the kilowatt-hours you export to the grid at the full retail rate. That one-for-one credit is the backbone of solar economics in Florida: it means a kilowatt-hour your system sends out in the afternoon offsets a kilowatt-hour you pull back at night.
Two honest caveats belong next to that sentence. First, a phase-down of these credit rates has been discussed for years and is widely expected at some point — but as of mid-2026 no date is set and no rule has been finalized. (The 2022 legislation that would have changed net metering, HB 741, was vetoed by Governor DeSantis.) Second, several municipal utilities and electric cooperatives already credit exports at less than full retail — JEA in Jacksonville and OUC’s newer-customer export rates in Orlando are examples — so the specific utility that serves your address matters. We keep utility-by-utility details current in our FPL net metering guide and the rest of our Florida utility series.
One planning implication is worth spelling out: historically, when net-metering rules change, existing solar customers have been grandfathered under the rules in place when they interconnected. Nobody can promise that, but it is one reason some homeowners prefer to interconnect under today’s full-retail rules rather than wait for a rule change to be announced.
Without the federal credit, roughly 30% of the effective discount homeowners enjoyed in 2025 is off the table. That does not make solar a bad deal — it makes lazy math a bad deal. Here is the framework we use when we model a system for a Florida home, and the same one you should demand from any installer:
Every kilowatt-hour your panels produce is one you do not buy from the utility at whatever the rate happens to be in 2030 or 2035. That is the durable part of the value proposition, and it is the part no legislature can retroactively take away from power you have already produced and consumed.
National solar articles miss the two factors that dominate the decision here.
Hurricane resilience. Florida systems are engineered to the Florida Building Code’s wind-load requirements, and in the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone (Miami-Dade and Broward counties) both the products and the attachment details must carry approvals for some of the strictest wind standards in the country. Properly installed modern racking is designed to stay on the roof in the same storms that take shingles off. We wrote a full piece on how solar panels hold up in Florida hurricanes if you want the engineering detail.
Outage value is not on the bill. A grid-tied solar system without storage shuts down during an outage — that is a safety requirement, not a defect. Pairing panels with a battery changes what the system is: it becomes backup power for your refrigerator, internet, and air conditioning during the days after a storm, in addition to a bill-reduction tool the other 360 days a year. The federal credit’s expiration applies to batteries purchased by homeowners too, so the same honest-math rules apply — but families who have sweated through a week-long post-hurricane outage tend to value backup power well beyond its spreadsheet payback.
Heat and sun. Florida’s solar resource is among the best in the continental U.S., and summer air-conditioning load means production and consumption peak together. That alignment is why a well-designed Florida system offsets a larger share of the bill than the same hardware would in most northern states.
The case is still strong if: your monthly electric bill is high (large homes, pools, EVs), you are served by a full-retail net-metering utility like FPL, Duke, or TECO, your roof is reasonably young and unshaded, and you plan to own the home for the medium-to-long term. The sales-tax and property-tax exemptions plus one-for-one export credits carry real weight even with no federal credit.
Think twice, or at least demand tighter numbers, if: your usage is modest, your utility credits exports well below retail, your roof needs replacement soon (do the roof first — or together), or you may sell within a couple of years and are counting on bill savings rather than resale value. An honest installer will tell you when the numbers are thin. We would rather pass on a project than sign a customer whose system cannot deliver what the proposal promised.
Does Florida have a state solar tax credit? No. Florida has never had a state income-tax credit for solar (there is no state income tax). Its incentives are the sales-tax exemption and the property-tax exclusion described above — plus net metering.
Can I still get the federal credit if I signed a contract in 2025 but installed in 2026? The statute cut off the credit based on when expenditures are made, and the details of contract timing versus payment timing are a tax question, not a sales question. Get a written answer from a tax professional before anyone books that credit into your quote.
Will net metering change for people who already have solar? When rules have changed elsewhere, existing customers have typically been grandfathered under their original terms, and no finalized Florida rule change exists as of this writing. But grandfathering is a policy choice, not a guarantee — which is itself an argument for interconnecting under today’s rules rather than waiting.
For thirty more Florida-specific questions and answers — costs, permits, insurance, batteries, HOA rules — see our Florida Solar FAQ.
The expiration of the §25D credit ended the era when almost any Florida solar quote penciled out. What replaces it is a market where system design, utility tariff, and honest financing math decide the answer house by house. Florida’s state-level incentives survived, full-retail net metering at the major utilities survives today, and the sun did not get any dimmer. If you want a number instead of a narrative, we will model your actual usage against your actual utility’s tariff and tell you what the system would really do — including telling you if the answer is “not yet.”
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About the author: Joe Cataldo is the CEO of Goldin Solar, LLC, a Vero Beach, Florida–based solar installation company serving homeowners and businesses across the state. He holds a Florida Certified Solar Contractor license (CVC57300) and a Florida Certified Electrical Contractor license (EC13013985), both issued by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation. Joe personally oversees system design standards and code compliance on Goldin Solar projects.
