Under four in ten homes come with a roof of your own
Single-detached houses are 38.3 percent of Cincinnati's 160,409 housing units, per the Census Bureau's 2020-2024 American Community Survey estimates. That is the smallest detached share of any Ohio city we cover, and it changes what a solar enquiry actually is for most residents here.
The distinctive part is the middle of the distribution. Buildings of 3 to 4 units are 12.1 percent of the stock and buildings of 5 to 9 units another 7.8 percent, which is a lot of small multi-unit buildings. Those are the hardest case in practice, because the roof belongs to an owner or association but the building is too small to have a professional manager who has considered solar before. Expect to be the first person to raise it, and expect the conversation to be about the owner's economics rather than yours, since they own the roof and usually hold the account any generation would offset.
Buildings of 20 or more apartments add 18.2 percent. There the route is a written proposal covering cost, ownership of the equipment, insurance and roof replacement, put to the building owner rather than to an installer. Row houses are 4.9 percent, and those share a roofline and a wall with the neighbouring unit, so fixings, penetrations and future roof access need settling in writing with that neighbour before anything is designed.
If you are in the 38.3 percent with a detached house, you can go straight to quotes, and the questions that remain are about the roof and the utility rather than about permission.
Duke Energy Ohio, retail-rate credits, and the true-up to ask about
Duke Energy Ohio is the investor-owned utility for the Cincinnati area, and it falls under the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio's rules for solar interconnection and net metering, alongside AEP's Ohio Power Company, AES Ohio and FirstEnergy's three Ohio utilities.
The Ohio statute requires credits be valued at the full retail rate. That is a genuinely good arrangement and better than the supply-only crediting that new customers face in some neighbouring states. Excess credits beyond a monthly bill roll forward as kilowatt-hour credits to subsequent months rather than converting to cash, so what you are accumulating is energy to be used later rather than income.
The question to put to Duke directly is the annual true-up, because Ohio does not standardise it. Some utilities reset accumulated credits to zero at the end of a 12-month period, forfeiting any remaining balance; others permit indefinite rollover. Ask which applies to your tariff and what date the 12-month period ends on, because the answer changes what an oversized system is worth.
Then size to twelve months of your own kilowatt hour totals rather than to available roof area. Under a resetting tariff, generation past your annual consumption is given away once a year; under indefinite rollover it is not. Ask your installer to model against your own usage rather than against the roof.
What the roof produces, and what actually erodes it
Plan on roughly 1,266 kilowatt hours a year for every kilowatt installed, on a well oriented and unshaded array. That is a screening figure derived from irradiance data rather than a measurement from Cincinnati roofs, so treat it as a ceiling and expect your address to land below it.
Orientation erodes it first. A south-facing plane produces the most, east and west planes produce usefully but give up output, and a north plane rarely repays the hardware. On a row house or a small multi-unit building, usable area is often the binding constraint rather than sun, so the more useful question is how many panels fit well rather than how many fit.
Shading erodes it most, because it removes production in the middle of the day when the array would otherwise be strongest. Insist on an assessment that considers the whole year rather than the hour of the site visit, since a bare tree in April is a full canopy by July. Check the roof covering age at the same time: panels outlast most coverings, so one within a few years of replacement should be replaced before the array goes on rather than paying later to remove and reinstall it.
The federal credit is not part of a purchase today
The 30 percent federal 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. A purchase in Cincinnati now cannot claim it.
That is a material change rather than a technicality. The credit was large enough to carry a substantial share of a residential project, so removing it lengthens payback, raises the effective cost per kilowatt hour saved, and changes whether a battery is worth adding. A great deal of published material has not caught up, so a quote or calculator that still includes it may be out of date rather than dishonest, but the resulting payback figure is wrong either way.
Ask any installer to show the arithmetic without the credit, built from what still exists: retail-rate net metering credits under the Ohio statute, the electricity you no longer buy, and the true-up terms of your own Duke tariff. If a salesperson resists rebuilding the numbers that way, that resistance is itself information.
If you go solar through 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 you. What they claim and what reaches you are separate questions. Put both to the provider and confirm with a tax advisor rather than with the sales material.