Duke moved new customers off flat retail net metering
Duke Energy no longer offers legacy flat retail net metering to new residential solar customers. New customers are placed on time-differentiated net-metering or bridge rate options. Under the old arrangement an exported kilowatt hour offset one you bought later at the same price, so the timing of production barely mattered. That is no longer true.
Under time-differentiated rates, the value of your array depends on when it generates and when your household consumes. A system that produces heavily at midday while nobody is home is a different financial proposition from the same system in a house with daytime occupancy, an electric vehicle charging on a timer, or a battery. None of that mattered under flat retail crediting and all of it matters now.
So ask your installer two questions rather than one. Which specific rate option have you modelled, and what does the same system look like under the alternatives available to me. If the answer treats an exported kilowatt hour and a self-consumed one as equal in value, the model is describing the old rules.
Then ask Duke directly which options a new residential solar customer can choose between at your address, and what the differences amount to across a full year rather than a sunny month. That answer will move your payback further than any equipment decision.
Two changes, and how to tell whether a quote reflects them
There are two recent changes and a quote can quietly miss either. The first is Duke's move away from flat retail net metering. The second is federal: the 30 percent residential tax credit under Section 25D applied through December 31, 2025 and is not available for a purchased home system placed in service after that date.
The test is short. Ask whether the calculation includes the 30 percent federal credit. Ask which net metering or bridge rate option it assumes. Then ask to see the same calculation with the credit removed and the current rate option applied. An installer who has been working in Charlotte through both changes will produce that without argument, because other customers will have asked already.
Be careful with advice from neighbours, too. Someone who installed in 2024 or early 2025 had the federal credit and legacy net metering, and their reported payback is accurate for their own project. It is simply not a guide to yours, and the gap is not marginal.
If you take a lease or a power purchase agreement rather than buying, the provider may claim the business version of the credit under Section 48E and reflect part of that value in the rate they offer. Ask what they claim and what actually reaches you, and confirm with a tax advisor rather than with the sales material.
Permits, and what this page will not guess at
Solar permitting in North Carolina requires both an electrical permit and a building permit from the local Authority Having Jurisdiction, which for a Charlotte address is the city. Charlotte administers permitting through its Planning, Design and Development department and publishes a searchable record of projects and permits.
What we did not confirm from the city's own material is the current fee for a residential rooftop solar permit or its published processing time. Figures for both circulate on commercial solar-permit sites, and we are not going to repeat them as though the city had stated them. Ask Charlotte directly what a rooftop installation costs to permit and what turnaround to expect, and get the answer before an installation date is agreed.
The searchable permit record is genuinely useful before you apply. Look for recent solar permits in the city to see what has been granted and by whom, which is a better check on an installer's claim to work here than asking them.
Agree in writing who files each permit, since North Carolina needs both. The most common failure on a two-permit project is each party assuming the other handled one of them.
The benefit that never arrives as a cheque
North Carolina excludes most of the added assessed home value of a residential active solar heating, cooling or electric system from property tax. The improvement does not raise your property tax bill the way an equivalent renovation of similar cost would.
It is easy to overlook because it is invisible. There is nothing to apply for, no cheque arrives, and it will not appear on any quote. It is a cost that simply does not materialise, and over the life of a system that is worth adding to your own arithmetic.
It also disposes of an objection that comes up often: that a visible improvement will be reassessed and taxed. In North Carolina most of that added value is excluded, so the worry does not apply here in the way it might in another state.
One caution on who your utility is. North Carolina has 76 municipally-owned electric utilities, and municipal providers and Electric Membership Cooperatives are not regulated by the North Carolina Utilities Commission. Everything above about Duke applies only if Duke bills you, so read the name on your bill before applying any of it.