First establish who bills you
SRP serves much of the Phoenix metropolitan area, including parts of Chandler, and service territory boundaries can change block by block. Verify your provider by entering your address on the utility websites rather than assuming based on your city.
The two utilities are genuinely different products. APS credits exports under a Resource Comparison Proxy rate rider with the initial purchase rate locked for ten years. SRP puts solar customers on demand and export based plans where a per-kilowatt demand charge is calculated on 30-minute intervals during on-peak hours.
So a neighbour a few streets away may be describing an arrangement you cannot have. In this part of the Valley, solar advice does not travel reliably even within a single city, which is why the address check comes before everything else.
Once you know, hold every quote against that utility. An installer who has not asked which utility serves you before producing a savings figure has produced a figure about somebody else.
SRP publishes several solar plans, and they suit different homes
SRP offers demand and export based price plans for customers with on-site generation and battery energy storage systems, and publishes a Solar Customer Generation Price Plan, an Average Demand Price Plan for solar customers, a Time-of-Use Export Price Plan for solar customers and an Electric Vehicle Export Price Plan for solar customers.
Those are structurally different, not variations on a theme. A demand-based plan rewards a household that can keep its highest half-hour of on-peak draw low. A time-of-use export plan is about when energy moves rather than how hard your peak is. An electric vehicle plan exists because a car changes the shape of a household load entirely.
Ask SRP which of these a new residential solar customer at your address can choose between today, and ask for the differences across a full year rather than a sample month. Plans get retired and added over time, so confirm current availability rather than working from an article.
Then ask your installer which plan their projection assumes and to model at least two. A savings figure that does not name a plan is not a projection about your household, and in SRP territory the gap between plans can change whether the project makes sense at all.
What your household does matters as much as what you buy
Under any of these arrangements, electricity you consume as it is generated is worth more than electricity you export, because exports are credited below the retail rate. Excess energy on the Customer Generation plan is credited at a fixed price of 3.45 cents per kilowatt-hour.
That means household behaviour has real financial value here, and unlike equipment it costs nothing to change. Moving laundry, dishwashing and vehicle charging into daylight raises the share of production you use yourself, and on a demand plan keeping those loads out of the on-peak window matters separately again.
On-peak hours are weekdays from 5 to 9 a.m. and 5 to 9 p.m. from November through April, and weekdays from 2 to 8 p.m. from May through October. Map your own week against those windows before choosing a plan, because the right plan depends on what your household can realistically do.
Be honest in that exercise. A plan that only works if nobody cooks before 8 p.m. in July is not a plan that will work. Choose for the household you have rather than the one a savings projection assumes.
The state credit you claim yourself, and the federal one that ended
Arizona still has a state income tax credit of its own, claimed on Arizona Form 310, Credit for Solar Energy Devices. It is calculated by multiplying the cost of a solar energy device by 25 percent, capped at $1,000, and the form provides for tracking credit carryover across multiple years.
Ask a tax advisor how the cap and the carryover apply to your situation before you rely on a figure in a quote. A credit is only worth what you can actually use against tax owed, and an installer is not the right party to advise you on that.
Arizona also exempts solar equipment from state sales tax and excludes it from property tax, so the improvement does not raise your property tax bill the way a renovation of similar cost would. Neither arrives as a cheque, which is exactly why they get left out of people's own arithmetic.
The federal position has changed and much published material has not caught up. The 30 percent Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so a cash or loan purchase now does not receive it. Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements, so such a provider may claim it and reflect part of the value in the rate offered. Ask what they claim and what actually reaches you, and confirm with a tax advisor.