The date your solar year actually ends
Oregon credits excess generation at the full retail rate and carries it forward month to month as kilowatt hour credits. That part works the way most people expect net metering to work.
What differs is the annual reconciliation. The annual billing cycle concludes at the end of the March billing cycle each year, and any remaining unused kilowatt hour credit is granted to the electric utility for distribution to customers enrolled in its low-income assistance programmes.
March is a well-chosen date from the utility perspective and an awkward one from yours. You accumulate credit through a productive summer, draw it down through a dark winter, and the reckoning falls just as spring production is starting to recover.
It is a genuinely good use of surplus energy, and it is also not money coming back to you. So the design question is not how to feel about it, it is how to avoid generating a surplus you will donate.
What that means for how big to build
A system sized to generate more than your household consumes across a year is a system that donates the difference every March. There is no bank, no payout and no carry into the following year.
So the design should be built from your last twelve months of bills rather than from the roof area available. Ask what percentage of your annual usage the proposed system covers, and treat anything meaningfully above 100 percent as needing a specific justification.
The one good justification is a concrete planned increase in load: an electric vehicle, a heat pump, an addition. Sizing ahead of a real plan is sound. Sizing ahead of a vague intention is buying panels to give the electricity away.
Ask your installer directly what the savings projection assumes happens to credit remaining at the end of March. A model that carries a surplus forward year after year is describing something ORS 757.300 does not allow.
The Energy Trust incentive and the string attached
Portland General Electric customers receive a cash incentive of $3,500 per home from Energy Trust of Oregon on systems of at least 2 kW DC. With the federal residential credit gone, that is the largest single incentive most Portland homeowners will see.
It comes with a requirement that costs people the money. The system must be installed by an approved Energy Trust solar trade ally contractor, so hiring a good installer who is not a trade ally forfeits the incentive entirely.
That is not a small check to run. Ask any installer, before anything else, whether they are a current Energy Trust trade ally, and verify it with Energy Trust rather than taking the answer on trust.
If a battery is in the design, PGE customers can also receive $400 per kWh up to $5,000 per home, with a minimum of 3 kWh and a requirement that the battery connect to a qualifying solar system. Offers are subject to funding availability and can change.
What is left, and when it is funded
The 30 percent federal Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so a cash or loan purchase in Portland receives no federal tax credit. Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements.
The state Oregon Solar + Storage Rebate Program reopened on June 15, 2026 and was fully reserved, so it is not currently accepting applications. Check its status with ODOE before letting a quote include it.
What does exist is the Energy Trust incentive of $3,500 through an approved trade ally, the battery incentive if storage is included, and retail-rate net metering with the March true-up.
Then add the electricity you stop buying, priced honestly. The EIA put the Oregon residential average at about 12.2 cents per kWh in April 2026, with PGE metro customers above that, and PGE raised residential rates about 5 percent effective April 1, 2026.