Solar Panel Cost in Arkansas (2026)

Net metering: Non-legacy schedule at avoided cost; pre-Sept-2024 grandfathered

Arkansas net metering changed under Act 278 of 2023, and the pivot is a date. Projects developed before September 30, 2024 were grandfathered at the one-to-one rate for a 20-year contract duration, which runs through September 2040. For those customers an exported kilowatt hour and a consumed one remain worth the same, and nothing about the change affects them for the working life of the system. Customers interconnecting after September 30, 2024, with certain exceptions, take service under a non-legacy net metering schedule instead. Under it, generation consumed on site in real time offsets electricity you would have bought at the retail rate, which remains the most valuable outcome, while excess exported to the grid is compensated at avoided cost, a wholesale-style measure well below the roughly 14.2 cent Arkansas residential average. The utilities argued in support of the change that full retail credit shifted transmission, distribution and maintenance costs onto other customers. Whatever view you take of that, the practical consequence for a new system is the same: self-consumption is worth substantially more than export, so the design should be built from your daytime load rather than from your annual total, load shifting into daylight is free value, and storage carries more weight than the national conversation suggests. Arkansas is also served extensively by electric cooperatives and municipal utilities whose terms may differ, so confirm what applies at your address.