What the exclusion means in practice
Kentucky law requires investor-owned utilities and electric cooperatives to offer net metering to customers with qualifying solar systems. TVA is excluded from that requirement.
TVA supplies electricity across much of western Kentucky through local power companies and municipal utilities, which distribute its power under contract rather than generating their own.
Those distributors are not offering Kentucky net metering under state law. What they offer instead follows the TVA framework, under which residential exports are purchased at TVA avoided cost through its Dispersed Power Production programme.
Avoided cost is a wholesale-style measure well below the retail rate, so the arrangement is materially different from the full retail net metering LG&E and Kentucky Utilities customers receive.
The check that settles it
Look at the utility name on a recent bill. If it is a municipal utility or a local power company rather than LG&E, Kentucky Utilities or Duke Energy Kentucky, the TVA framework is the likely one.
Then ask that utility directly how exported electricity is compensated and at what rate, and whether an interconnection agreement is required to participate.
Ask what system size limits apply, what the interconnection application involves, what it costs and how long approval takes. Practice varies between local power companies.
Get those answers in writing from the utility rather than from a sales conversation, because a quote built from a statewide Kentucky template will assume net metering that may not be available to you.
Designing when exports earn avoided cost
If your utility compensates exports at avoided cost, the design brief changes completely from the one that applies in Louisville. Self-consumption becomes worth several times export.
That means sizing to your daytime load rather than your annual total. Ask what share of generation the model expects your household to use at the moment it is produced.
It also means a system covering less than your full annual usage frequently returns better, because the marginal panels produce mostly exports at the low rate. Ask for a smaller system modelled alongside the proposal.
And it raises the value of shifting flexible loads into daylight, and of storage, both of which convert low-value exports into full-value avoided purchases.
Rebuilding the arithmetic on Kentucky terms
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 receives no federal tax credit, and Kentucky has no state solar tax credit.
Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements, so ask what a provider claims and what reaches you in the rate.
Then establish what your own utility actually offers rather than assuming Kentucky net metering applies, since the state requirement excludes TVA.
Rebuild the projection from those terms, your actual retail rate, and a stated self-consumption share. Ask for it in writing.