If you rent or do not control the roof
Establish who owns and controls the roof before anything else. If you rent, the roof is not yours to alter, and a landlord has to be part of any conversation from the beginning rather than being asked at the end.
If you own a unit in a multi-family building, find out what the governing documents say about common elements and who has authority over the roof. That determines whether a personal installation is possible at all, or whether the sensible route is a building-level project.
Ask your utility what options exist for customers who cannot install on their own roof. It is a short call and the answer is worth having before you conclude that solar is unavailable to you.
If you own a rental property here, ask how net metering credit works when your tenant holds the electricity account, since that determines who receives the bill savings. Settle that before installation rather than after.
If you can install, what the arrangement looks like
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 recorded on your electric bill, automatically applied in the next billing period in which you consume more energy than you produce. They carry forward rather than expiring monthly.
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.
The tier attaches to the location rather than to you, so if you are buying or selling a property with an existing system, ask the utility what arrangement the address is on and whether it transfers. Get that in writing before closing.
Protecting yourself from a bad deal
Get equipment specified by manufacturer and model number rather than by description. Model numbers make a warranty enforceable later and let you compare two quotes on the same basis rather than on adjectives.
Establish who honours each warranty and for how long. Panels, inverter and workmanship are commonly covered by three different parties, and a company that has left the market cannot support a workmanship warranty however well drafted.
Ask any projection what export credit it applies. A model built on one-to-one crediting rather than 75 percent, or carried over from an earlier tier, overstates what you receive, and that is the single easiest thing for a quote to get wrong.
Do not sign at the kitchen table on the night of the first conversation. Take the paperwork, read it, and get a second quote. An offer that is genuinely good will still be there next week.
The tier you join, your association, and the federal credit
New Nevada customers must enroll in Tier 4, which credits excess energy at 75 percent of the retail rate, and keep that tier for a period of 20 years at the location where the system was originally installed. Earlier tiers credited 95, 88 and 81 percent and closed in August 2018, June 2019 and June 2020.
Because exports are credited at 75 percent while electricity you consume as it is generated 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.
On associations, NRS 111.239 makes void and unenforceable any covenant that prohibits or unreasonably restricts an owner from using a system for obtaining solar energy, and treats a restriction reducing the effectiveness of the system by more than 10 percent as unreasonable. If a committee proposes moving your array, have your installer model both placements and put the difference in writing.
There is also a route that does not require litigation: under NRS 701.180(6) the Director of the Governor's Office of Energy shall make a determination within 30 days if asked to decide whether an unreasonable restriction has been placed on a solar energy system. Separately, the 30 percent Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after December 31, 2025.