City or county? Find out before you sign
Ask which building department has jurisdiction over your specific address rather than assuming from the name of the area you live in. An address a few streets apart can fall under a city or under the county.
That answer determines the permit process, the fees, the plan review requirements and the inspection scheduling. It also determines whose approval your installer is chasing when a project stalls, which is the question you will actually want answered.
Ask your installer directly how many projects they have permitted with that particular authority and what the process involved. Someone who works the valley broadly will know both routes; someone who works only inside one city may not.
Agree in writing who files the permit and who schedules inspections, and ask for the expected date of permission to operate rather than the installation date. Only the second earns you anything.
The utility rules are the same wherever you are permitted
New Nevada customers must enroll in Tier 4, which credits excess energy at 75 percent of the retail rate, and customers keep their tier for a period of 20 years at the location where the system was originally installed.
Excess energy pushed onto the grid earns credits, which are recorded on your electric bill and automatically applied in the next billing period in which you consume more energy than you produce.
Because exports are credited at 75 percent while self-consumed electricity avoids a purchase at the full retail rate, ask your installer to model the self-consumed share explicitly and value the remainder at 75 percent rather than at retail.
Ask whether their projection uses 75 percent for exports at all. A model built on one-to-one crediting, or carried over from an earlier tier, will overstate what you receive.
Heat, output and the roof underneath
Panel efficiency falls as cell temperature rises, so the hottest afternoons are not the highest-producing ones. Ask what temperature assumptions sit behind your production estimate and whether it was modelled for your roof rather than a regional average.
Ask about mounting and airflow beneath the modules, since that affects operating temperature and therefore hot-weather output, particularly on a low-slope or tightly flush installation.
Check the roof covering before anything is ordered. Panels outlast most coverings, and intense sun with extreme heat ages roofing faster than a year count suggests, so ask for a condition assessment rather than an age estimate.
Ask how mounting penetrations are flashed and sealed, what the roofing manufacturer approves for your covering type, and what the workmanship warranty covers on them and for how long.
The tier you join, and the federal credit that ended
New Nevada customers must enroll in Tier 4, which credits excess energy at 75 percent of the retail rate. Tier 1 credited 95 percent and closed in August 2018, Tier 2 credited 88 percent and closed in June 2019, and Tier 3 credited 81 percent and closed in June 2020.
Customers keep their tier for a period of 20 years at the location where the net metering system was originally installed. That is a long commitment attached to a property rather than to a person, and it is worth understanding before you sign.
Because a neighbour who installed in 2018 or 2019 is on a materially better tier than you can join, their reported payback is accurate for their project and is not a guide to yours. That is not them being misleading, it is a different arrangement entirely.
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.