SMART is only for three utilities
The Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target program is provided to customers of one of three investor-owned electric utility companies: Eversource, National Grid and Unitil. The Department of Public Utilities oversees statewide adherence to the tariffs.
Customers of municipal light plants are not eligible for SMART. Massachusetts has approximately 40 municipal light plants, and because they follow town boundaries you can have neighbouring communities where one is eligible and the other is not.
That makes advice from a friend in the next town genuinely unreliable here, not as a matter of degree but as a matter of which programme exists for them. Read the name on your electricity bill before applying any figure you have been given.
If you are on a municipal light plant, ask whether your own utility offers its own incentive. Many do run local programmes, and that is a question for your utility rather than for a solar salesperson.
If you are eligible, what the programme pays
For residential systems under 25 kW, SMART incentive payments last for a fixed term of 10 years, and the compensation rate is determined at the time a participant enrols and is locked for that duration.
Payments are made directly by the utility to the system owner, via the same billing structure as net metering. Each month the utility reads the production meter and the owner receives a payment representing the difference between the SMART rate and the value of the energy already credited through net metering.
So a production meter has to be installed and reporting for you to be paid. Confirm in writing that one is included, who installs it, and how you can check later that it is still reporting.
Ask what the current residential rate is and get it in writing from the programme rather than from an article, since the rate that governs your ten years is the one applicable when you enrol.
Net metering, whichever utility you are on
Massachusetts offers net metering for residential systems, crediting exported solar at or near the retail or basic service rate. That is favourable, and it is separate from the SMART question.
If your utility is a municipal light plant, ask what its own net metering or customer generation arrangement is, how exports are credited, whether credits roll over, and what limit applies to system size. Get the answers in writing.
Ask your installer which utility and which arrangement their savings projection assumes. A projection that names neither is not a projection about your household, and in a state where eligibility changes at a town line that is not a pedantic question.
Ask them how many projects they have done on your specific utility. Someone who works across the region will know both routes and will have raised the eligibility question before you did.
Three state benefits, and the federal one that ended
Massachusetts has a state income tax credit of its own. Under 830 CMR 62.6.1 an owner or tenant of a residential property who occupies it as their principal residence is allowed a solar and wind energy credit against personal income tax equal to fifteen percent of the net expenditure for renewable energy source property, or $1,000, whichever is less. It is claimed on Schedule EC.
Note that it is available to a tenant as well as an owner, which is unusual and worth knowing if you are paying for a system on a property you occupy but do not own. Ask a tax advisor how it applies to your circumstances, since a credit is only worth what you can use against tax owed.
There is also a property tax exemption of 100 percent for 20 years for solar installations, and equipment for a solar system used as a primary or auxiliary energy source in a principal residence is exempt from sales and use tax. Neither arrives as a cheque, which is exactly why both get left out of people's own arithmetic.
On the federal side, 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. Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements, so ask any such provider what they claim and what of that value reaches you, and confirm with a tax advisor.