Solar*Rewards is a trade, not a bonus
Through the incentivised Solar*Rewards programme the system owner receives payments for the energy the system produces, in exchange for the Renewable Energy Credits associated with that production. A Renewable Energy Credit is the environmental attribute of a megawatt hour of clean generation, tradeable separately from the electricity itself.
So when you enrol, you are selling something. The electricity still offsets your bill, but the claim that your household is powered by renewable energy transfers to whoever holds the credits, which is Xcel.
For most homeowners that is an entirely reasonable trade, since the payment is real and the attribute is abstract. It is worth understanding rather than discovering, particularly if part of your motivation for going solar is being able to say your home runs on clean power.
Ask your installer what the current Solar*Rewards payment rate is, how long the contract runs and whether the rate is fixed for that term. Programme rates have moved over the years, so a figure from an older guide is not a safe input to your own arithmetic.
The upfront incentive worth asking about by name
Separately from the per-kilowatt-hour payment, Xcel offers an upfront incentive to customers who meet income requirements or who live in a qualifying community. It is a materially different amount of help than the ordinary programme, and it is not applied automatically.
Aurora is a large and economically mixed city, which means a meaningful number of households qualify on one basis or the other without knowing the category exists.
The way this gets missed is mundane. A salesperson quotes the standard package, the homeowner never asks, and the eligibility question is simply never raised.
So raise it. Ask directly whether your household meets the income requirements and whether your address sits in a qualifying community, and ask to see the answer rather than being told it was checked.
Size to your consumption, not to your roof
Xcel credits exported solar at the retail rate and rolls the surplus into a Solar Bank, but a bank you cannot cash at retail value is worth less than electricity you never had to buy. The most valuable kilowatt hour a system produces is the one your own household consumes as it is generated.
That points to a system built from your last twelve months of bills rather than from the available roof area. Ask what percentage of your annual usage the proposed system covers, and be sceptical of a design that comfortably exceeds it.
The exception is a planned change in load. An electric vehicle, a heat pump or an addition genuinely raises future consumption, and sizing for that is sound. Sizing for a hypothetical one is not.
If a larger system is proposed, ask what specifically justifies the extra capacity. A clear answer about future load is a good sign. A vague answer about maximising production usually means the design was drawn to the roof.
The parts that survive without qualification
The 30 percent federal Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so a cash or loan purchase in Aurora receives no federal tax credit. A quote that still shows one is overstating your return.
Section 48E, the commercial credit, survives at 30 percent and can be claimed by a third-party owner under a lease or power purchase agreement. Ask what the provider claims and what portion reaches you in the rate offered, and confirm the treatment with a tax advisor.
What remains is full retail net metering with the Solar Bank election, Solar*Rewards if you enrol and accept the REC trade, the property tax exemption for residential systems of no more than 100 kW AC under Section 39-3-102 C.R.S., and the residential energy sales and use tax exemption.
Ask any installer to rebuild the projection from those alone, and to state the Solar*Rewards rate and term they assumed rather than folding it into a single savings figure.