Registration with the PSC, then GATS within 30 days
A solar system must be registered with the Maryland Public Service Commission in order to generate SRECs. That is a separate process from your interconnection with the utility and from your building permit, and none of the three does the others.
Within 30 days of registering with the PSC, a solar array owner needs to go to PJM Interconnection's Generator Attribute Tracking System, known as GATS, for next steps. That is a specific window with a specific consequence, and it is not something to discover later.
Ask your installer directly whether they handle PSC registration and the GATS step, and get the answer in writing. Many do as a matter of course, but many homeowners assume it and nobody does it.
Then ask to be sent the confirmations rather than told it is done. Registration and GATS enrolment are documents you will want years later, and they are the proof that your system was set up to earn from the start.
What the certificates actually are
One megawatt-hour of solar production generates one SREC, so a system producing 12,000 kilowatt-hours over a typical year generates 12 SRECs per year. They are earned on generation, whether you consumed that electricity yourself or exported it.
Demand comes from Maryland's Renewable Portfolio Standard law, which requires 14.5 percent solar, 2.5 percent off-shore wind and 50 percent total renewables by the end of calendar year 2030. Suppliers have to acquire certificates to meet that obligation, and that is who ultimately buys yours.
Because it is a market rather than an administratively fixed rate, the price moves. Treat any SREC income in a savings projection as a forecast rather than a payment, and ask your installer what price their model assumes and where that figure came from.
Ask to see the projection with SREC income removed entirely. That is your floor: what the system is worth on bill savings alone, and it tells you how much of the case rests on a market price nobody controls.
And the half that does happen automatically
Maryland credits exported solar at the retail electricity rate. The framework is set by statute and administered by the Public Service Commission, so it is broadly the same whether you are served by BGE, Pepco, Delmarva Power or Potomac Edison.
Credits accumulate through the year and there is an annual reconciliation. Ask your utility what happens to a remaining surplus at that point and what options you have for carrying credits forward instead, because that answer changes what the right size of system is.
Net metering and SRECs are separate and they stack. That is unusual and it is a large part of why Maryland pays back faster than its sun hours alone would suggest, but it also means a projection has two places to be optimistic rather than one.
Ask for the bill savings and the SREC income to be shown separately across a year rather than as a single combined figure. They behave differently and only one of them is fixed by tariff.
The exemptions that need no application, and the credit that ended
Under Maryland Tax-Property Article Section 7-242, residential solar energy property is not subject to real property tax, so the improvement does not raise your property tax bill the way a renovation of similar cost would. Solar energy equipment is also exempt from the state sales and use tax.
Neither arrives as a payment, which is exactly why both get left out of people's own arithmetic. Check that your quote reflects the sales and use tax exemption rather than assuming, and add the property tax treatment to your own figures even though no installer will hand it to you.
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 receives no federal credit. A quote that still applies it is overstating your return substantially.
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 rather than with the sales material.