Establish your flood exposure before the design
The Wyoming Valley levee system protects a defined area, and properties outside it carry a different risk entirely. The 2011 event demonstrated the distinction sharply: protected areas came through while unprotected West Pittston did not.
Being inside the levee is not the same as being safe either. The system is engineered to a design flood, and Agnes exceeded it. In 1972 flood elevations here ran roughly eight feet above the 1865 and 1936 records.
So establish two things for your address: whether you are inside the protected area, and what your flood zone designation is. Both are matters of public record and neither should be guessed at from how the street looks.
Bring that answer to the design conversation rather than discovering it afterwards. It determines where equipment can sensibly be mounted, and that is cheaper to decide before installation than to revisit later.
Where the electrical equipment sits, and at what height
A rooftop array is largely out of a river flood. The balance of system is not. Inverters, rapid shutdown devices, disconnects, the production meter and any battery are typically mounted at or near ground level, often in a basement or an attached garage.
In a flood-exposed property that placement is a choice rather than a default. Ask your installer where each component will go, at what height, and how that relates to your flood zone and to recorded flood elevations locally.
Basements are the specific thing to question. A basement is the conventional place for this equipment and the worst place for it in a flood-prone valley, and installers working outside the region may propose it without thinking.
If storage is in the design, raise it explicitly. A battery is heavy, expensive, contains a great deal of energy and is not something you want submerged, so its location deserves a deliberate decision rather than convenience.
Flood insurance treats this differently from your homeowners policy
Standard homeowners insurance generally does not cover flood. Flood cover is a separate policy, and whether a newly added solar system is included in it is a question to ask before installation rather than after a claim.
Ask your flood insurer directly whether the array and the balance of system are covered, whether they need to be scheduled, and whether equipment height affects the answer. Insurers can and do treat elevated equipment differently.
Ask your homeowners insurer the parallel questions about wind and fire, and get both answers in writing. Two insurers, two policies, two different views of the same installation is the normal situation here rather than an unusual one.
Keep those answers with the project paperwork. Insurance positions change over twenty-five years, and a record of what was agreed at installation is worth having when it matters.
The Pennsylvania economics underneath
Pennsylvania credits exported generation at full retail value through the year, with an annual reconciliation at which any remaining surplus is settled at a lower rate. That asymmetry means sizing much beyond your annual consumption gives value away once a year.
Ask what percentage of your annual usage the proposed system covers and how the reconciliation was handled in the projection. A model carrying surplus forward at retail indefinitely has made an assumption you should see stated.
Alternative Energy Credits are a second and separate income stream, earned on generation regardless of whether you consumed it or exported it. They are a market price rather than a fixed rate, so treat any AEC income in a projection as a forecast and ask to see the figures without it.
The 30 percent Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after 31 December 2025, so a cash or loan purchase receives no federal credit. Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under a lease or power purchase agreement.