What you send back is priced off fuel, not off your bill
BPUB describes the Fuel and Purchase Energy Charge as the cost of the various fuel sources it purchases to provide power to customers, naming natural gas, coal, wind and solar. It is a pass-through of what generation costs the utility.
Your retail rate is a different and larger thing. It has to cover the poles, wires, meters, staff, billing and debt service on top of the fuel. So the rate you are paid for an export is structurally below the rate you pay for an import, and not by a small margin.
The practical consequence is the same conclusion reached in most of Texas, arrived at by a different route: electricity you use in the moment you generate it is worth considerably more than electricity you send back. Self-consumption is the whole game.
That should shape the design. Size the array against what your household actually draws during daylight rather than against your annual total or the space on your roof, and treat exports as a modest bonus rather than as the return on the investment.
The number you have to go and get
BPUB does not publish the FPEC figure on its solar page. It explains what the charge is and directs customers to its rates page for the current value, which is a reasonable way to run a rate that moves with fuel costs and an awkward one if you are trying to model a twenty five year investment.
Third party figures circulate and they do not agree. Published values around 5 cents per kWh and around 9.9 cents per kWh both appear in material about BPUB, dated roughly a year apart.
We are not going to pick one. The difference is large enough to change the conclusion, and a fuel based charge by its nature moves, so any number quoted to you is a snapshot rather than a term of your purchase.
Ask BPUB for the current FPEC and for how often it is revised, and ask your installer which figure their projection used. If the projection used a number they cannot source, that tells you something useful about the projection.
The meters, and the equipment BPUB will want to see
BPUB may install two meters on a solar home: a PV meter to track what the system produces, and a bi-directional meter to measure what moves each way across your connection.
Those meters cost $100, charged when the solar company and a BPUB representative turn the system on. It is a small figure next to the project, but it is exactly the sort of item that appears at the end rather than in the quote, so confirm who is paying it.
BPUB also requires equipment carrying the appropriate safety certifications, and it asks customers to contact its specialists for an evaluation before proceeding. Treat that as a step in the timeline rather than a formality.
Ask your installer to confirm they have done BPUB interconnections before and to walk you through what the utility asks for. A municipal utility with its own process is not difficult, but it is not the process an installer who mostly works in deregulated territory will assume.
The exemption you must file for, and the credit that ended
Texas Tax Code Section 11.27 exempts 100 percent of the appraised value that an installed solar energy device adds to your home. It is not applied automatically: Form 50-123 goes to your county appraisal district, and the deadline for the current tax year is generally 30 April.
Put that deadline in your own calendar rather than relying on it being handled. An exemption you qualified for and did not claim is the most avoidable cost in a Texas solar project.
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 now does not receive it. A quote still applying it overstates your return substantially.
Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners, so a lease or power purchase agreement provider may claim it and reflect part of that value in the rate they offer. What they claim and what reaches you are separate questions, and a tax advisor is a better source on both than sales material.