Solar Panel Cost in Mississippi (2026)

Net metering: Avoided cost plus adders, grandfathered 25 years

Mississippi does not offer retail-rate net metering. Exported electricity is credited at the utility avoided cost rate plus a Distributed Generation Benefits Adder of 2.5 cents per kWh, and a Public Service Commission order in January 2025 updated the Entergy Mississippi tariff to 5.5 cents per kWh for customers not eligible for the low-to-moderate income adder and 7.5 cents for those who are. Against a Mississippi residential rate around 16 cents per kWh on recent EIA figures, an exported kilowatt hour is worth roughly a third of one consumed as it is generated, or a little under half with the income adder applied. Two features make this arrangement better than a bare avoided-cost regime. First, the adders are grandfathered for 25 years, which is close to the working life of a system, so a customer enrolling now is not exposed to annual revision the way Utah or Louisiana customers are. Second, the low-to-moderate income adder is genuinely accessible: eligibility has been expanded to households with annual income up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level, which in Mississippi reaches a large share of households, though the additional 2 cents per kWh is limited to the first 1,000 qualifying customers to install and runs 15 years from the start of net metering service. The design conclusion is the familiar one for an avoided-cost state: build around what your household consumes during daylight, shift flexible loads into the generating window, and treat storage as doing real arbitrage rather than only providing backup.