We’ve installed solar on thousands of homes across New York, and we’ve heard pretty much every question there is. These are the ten that come up most, and we answer them the way we would if we were sitting at your kitchen table.
1. “If I go solar, will I still get a bill from National Grid?”
When your panels are sized to cover your usage, you stop buying electricity from your utility, and that means you’re no longer paying for the power itself or the delivery charges that come with it. Those delivery charges are often a huge chunk of the bill, so that’s a big deal. What you’ll still see is a small monthly connection fee, usually somewhere around $20 to $30 depending on your utility. That fee keeps you hooked up to the grid, and you want to stay hooked up, for a reason we’ll get to in a second.
This is how the day-to-day works. On a sunny afternoon, your panels often make more power than your home is using. That extra power flows back to the grid, and your utility credits you for every kilowatt-hour, one for one. That’s called net metering. At night, or on a gray day in January, you draw power back from the grid and use those credits to cover it. Credits roll over from month to month, so a bright summer helps pay for a dark winter.
The simplest way to think about it: the grid becomes your battery, and the connection fee is what it costs to use it. If you’d like the full explanation, we walk through it in How Does Solar Net Metering Work in New York?
2. “How much will going solar cost me out of pocket?”
For most homeowners who qualify, nothing up front. There’s no install fee and no deposit to get your system on the roof.
What happens instead is that your electric bill gets replaced with a fixed monthly solar payment. Our goal on every project is to make that payment lower than what you’re paying the utility now, usually somewhere around 20% to 40% less, though the exact number depends on your usage, your roof and your utility. And unlike your electric bill, which seems to go up every year, that solar payment stays the same. So you start saving from the first month, and the gap only gets wider as utility rates keep climbing.
We can’t give you a real number over the phone, because every home is different. That’s what the free consultation is for. We’ll look at your actual bills and your roof, and show you exactly what your payment would be next to what you’re paying today, so you can decide for yourself whether the math works.
3. “Why would I finance it? Can I just pay cash, or pay it off early?”
You absolutely can, and plenty of people do.
If you’d rather pay for the system outright, just tell your Energy Advisor and they’ll put together a cash quote alongside the financed option so you can compare. Some homeowners also prefer to use their own bank or lender, and that’s fine too.
If you do finance, the term is typically around 20 years, because that’s what keeps the monthly payment lower than your current electric bill. But you’re not locked into it. There’s no prepayment penalty, so you can put extra toward it whenever you like, or pay the whole balance off early. Some homeowners make a bigger payment once they get money back from incentives, or set things up to pay the system off in five to seven years. Once it’s paid off, your power is essentially free for the rest of the system’s life.
In other words, financing is there to make solar easy to start, not to keep you paying longer than you want to.
4. “Am I buying the panels, or am I leasing them?”
With us, the goal is always for you to own them. Ownership is what Empire Solar was founded on back in 2015, when most companies were only offering leases that worked out better for them than for the homeowner.
Why does it matter? With a lease, you’re essentially renting your own roof back to a solar company, and the payments can go on for a very long time. When you own the system, every bit of power it makes is yours, every net metering credit is yours, and once it’s paid off, you’re not paying anybody.
In 2026, we also offer something called a Transfer of Ownership plan. The short version of it: a financing partner technically owns the system for the first few years so they can claim the 30% federal credit, which means you only finance the other 70%. Then at year six, the system transfers to you at no extra cost, and from that point on it’s fully yours. You get the savings of the federal credit without having to qualify for it on your own tax return. We explain it in more detail in The Best Way to Pay for Solar in 2026.
5. “I heard the federal tax credit went away. Are there still incentives?”
Yes, there are. Until the end of 2025, homeowners claimed the 30% federal credit on their own tax return. That only worked if you owed enough in federal taxes, which left out a lot of families. Starting in 2026, that credit moved to the commercial side of the tax code. It can’t be claimed by homeowners directly anymore, but a financing partner can claim it and apply it to your project up front. That’s exactly how our Transfer of Ownership plan works, so you still get the benefit, just in a different way.
On top of that, New York still has some of the best incentives in the country:
- The New York State solar tax credit is worth 25% of your system cost, up to $5,000, and you can carry it forward if you can’t use it all in one year.
- The NYSERDA income-qualified rebate takes $0.80 per watt off your system, up to $20,000, for households that meet county income guidelines.
- The NYSERDA battery incentive can take thousands off the cost of adding a home battery, while funding lasts.
- Property tax protection means the value solar adds to your home is exempt from property tax assessment for 15 years in most towns.
Not everyone qualifies for every program, and that’s part of what we figure out with you on the call. For the full rundown, see Are There Still Solar Incentives Available in 2026?
6. “Do I qualify? And why are you asking about my income and credit?”
We know those questions can feel personal, especially on a first call. There’s a real reason for each one.
Your credit matters because our $0-down option is a financed program, and the lender needs to know you’re a good fit. As a general guide, a score of around 680 or higher usually qualifies. We won’t run anything until you’ve decided you actually want to move forward, and even then it’s a soft pull.
Your income matters for two reasons. Some incentives, like the state tax credit, only help if you have enough taxable income to use them. Others, like NYSERDA’s income-qualified rebate, are designed for households under a certain income and can take thousands more off your cost. Asking helps us make sure you get every dollar you’re entitled to.
The deed matters because whoever owns the home needs to sign off on the project. If the house is in a trust or an LLC, or a spouse is also on the deed, we just need to know so the paperwork is right from the start.
And if you don’t qualify for one option, that doesn’t always mean solar is off the table. Sometimes it just means a different path, like paying cash or using your own lender.
7. “What happens when I need a new roof down the road?”
If your roof is already getting up there in age, the best move is usually to replace it first, so you’re not taking the panels off a few years later. The good news is you don’t have to hire a separate roofer. We have our own roofing team, so we can replace your roof and install your solar as one project, and in many cases the roof can be rolled into the same monthly payment.
If your roof is in good shape now but needs replacing years from now, that’s okay too. When you have us do that roof, we’ll take your panels off and put them back on at no extra cost. Many other installers charge for that, so it’s worth asking about wherever you shop.
Not sure how much life your roof has left? We’ll check it as part of your free consultation. We cover it in more depth in A Roof Replacement Is the Perfect Time to Think About Solar.
8. “Can I just go completely off-grid?”
We love the independence behind this question, but for almost every New York home, going fully off-grid isn’t practical, and it’s not something we offer. Here’s why:
To run a whole house with no grid connection, you’d need a big bank of batteries to carry you through every night, every cloudy stretch and every snowy week in January. That can easily add $20,000 to $30,000 or more to your project, and you’d still be in trouble if the batteries ran low during a long gray spell. Staying connected and using net metering gives you most of the same freedom for a lot less money, because the grid does the job of a giant battery for you.
What a lot of people really want is to keep the lights on when the power goes out. And that part we can absolutely help with. A regular solar system shuts itself off during an outage. That’s a safety rule that protects utility crews working on the lines. A home battery changes that. When the grid goes down, the battery takes over instantly and keeps your fridge, lights, internet and essentials running, often for 12 to 24 hours or more, and your panels recharge it the next morning.
Want to know if a battery makes sense for you? Read Do I Need Backup Power With Solar?
9. “What happens if your company goes out of business?”
That’s exactly the kind of question you should ask any company you’re trusting with your home for the next 25 years.
First, a little about where we stand. Empire Solar has been installing solar in New York since 2015, and we’ve completed more than 8,000 installations. We’ve watched a lot of companies come and go in that time, and we’re still here. We’re also one of only a handful of installers in the state to earn NYSERDA’s Platinum Status, which takes six straight years of passing the state’s own quality inspections.
Second, your system is protected beyond us. Your panels, inverters and batteries are covered by their manufacturers’ warranties, often 25 years on panels, and those warranties stay with the equipment no matter what happens to the installer. And because you own your system, it keeps producing power and earning net metering credits for you either way. It doesn’t stop working or belong to someone else just because a company changes.
That’s a big part of why we push for ownership instead of leasing. When you own it, your savings don’t depend on anyone else.
10. “What if I sell my house with solar panels?”
Solar doesn’t trap you in your house.
There’s no lien placed on your home with Empire Solar, so selling works a lot like selling any home with an upgrade in it. You generally have two options. You can pay off the remaining balance when you close, the same way you’d pay off any other loan, often from the proceeds of the sale. Or the system can be transferred to the buyer, who takes over the payments along with the lower electric bill.
And solar is usually seen as a plus, not a problem. Buyers like the idea of a home with lower energy costs, and New York’s property tax exemption means the added value won’t raise your tax bill for 15 years in most towns. It’s one more reason owning your system beats leasing it, since an owned system is much simpler to sell with than a lease that a buyer has to qualify for and sign onto.
If you’re on the other side of this, buying a house that already has panels, we’ve got you covered too in Buying a House With Solar Panels.
Still have questions? That’s what we’re here for.
Thousands of New York homeowners have asked us the very same things before deciding whether solar was right for them. The easiest way to get answers about your own home is a free, no-pressure consultation. We’ll look at your electric bills and your roof, check which incentives you qualify for, and show you exactly what your payment and savings would look like. If solar doesn’t make sense for you, we’ll tell you that, too.
Get your free Solar Savings Report. We’d be happy to talk it through.
And keep the questions coming. The next one you ask might end up in our future edition of You Asked, We Answered.
