What closed, and what replaced it
Senate Enrolled Act 309 ended net metering for new solar customers no later than July 1, 2022. New residential systems in Indiana are not eligible for it, whatever a guide written before that date may say.
The replacement is the Excess Distributed Generation credit. The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission sets it at the average wholesale cost of electricity from the prior year plus 25 percent.
Wholesale electricity costs far less than retail electricity, because retail includes the network that delivers it and everything else on your bill. Adding 25 percent to a wholesale figure still leaves you well below retail.
In practice that has produced a credit roughly 70 to 80 percent below the retail rate. Against an Indiana residential average around 17.9 cents per kWh in April 2026, an exported kilowatt hour is worth a small fraction of a consumed one.
What that gap does to a system design
Electricity your household uses at the moment it is generated displaces a purchase at the full retail rate. Electricity you export earns the Excess Distributed Generation rate. Those are now very different amounts.
So annual production stops being a useful summary of what a system is worth. What matters is how much of that production your house absorbs as it happens.
It also means the marginal panel at the top of a design produces mostly exports, earning a fraction of retail while costing full price. The return on each additional panel falls as the system grows.
Ask what self-consumption share the savings model assumed and ask for the savings split into two lines: value from self-consumed generation at retail, and value from exports at the Excess Distributed Generation rate.
The rate is recalculated, and set per utility
Because the credit is based on the prior year average wholesale cost, it is recalculated rather than fixed. A figure from an older guide is not necessarily the figure you would receive.
It is also set per utility rather than statewide, so the number depends on who bills you. Indianapolis, Fort Wayne and Evansville homes are not all on the same utility or necessarily the same credit.
Confirm the current Excess Distributed Generation rate directly with the utility that serves your address before accepting any figure in a projection.
Ask also what the projection assumed about that rate over its term. A model holding it flat for twenty-five years is making an assumption about future wholesale prices that should at least be stated.
Building the number from what Indiana still offers
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 Indianapolis receives no federal tax credit, and Indiana has no state income tax credit for solar.
Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements. Ask what a provider claims and what portion reaches you in the rate.
What exists is the 7 percent sales tax exemption on qualifying equipment, the property tax exemption on the added value, retail value for what you consume as it is generated, and the Excess Distributed Generation rate for what you export.
Ask any installer to rebuild the projection with those two values separated and the self-consumption assumption stated on the page.