Find out whether your plan caps the credit
Texas solar buyback plans differ in how credits accumulate. Some credit exported energy without a cap and roll credits over indefinitely. Others cap the credit that can accumulate, and once you reach it further exported generation earns nothing.
This is not a detail buried in the terms, it is the shape of the deal. Under an uncapped plan, extra production keeps earning and building a larger array can make sense. Under a capped plan, every kilowatt hour exported past the cap is free electricity for somebody else.
So the sizing conversation has to happen after the plan conversation, not before. Ask which plans available at your address buy back exports, whether the credit is capped, at what level, and whether unused credit rolls over or expires. PowerToChoose.org is the state-run comparison site and a reasonable place to start.
Then ask your installer to size the system to that answer. An installer who proposes a system without asking what plan you are on is designing to your roof rather than to your economics, and those are different problems.
What you use yourself is worth more than what you send out
In almost every Texas buyback plan, electricity you consume as it is generated is worth more to you than electricity you export, because avoiding a purchase at the plan energy rate beats being credited at the export rate.
That flips the usual sizing instinct. Rather than building to cover your annual consumption and letting exports balance the seasons, you often want a system matched more closely to what your household actually uses during daylight hours, especially under a capped plan.
Ask your installer to model the self-consumed share of production explicitly, and to value the remainder at the actual export terms of the plan you will be on. A projection that treats every kilowatt hour as equally valuable is describing net metering, which Texas does not mandate.
It also makes behaviour worth something. Running the dishwasher, the laundry and any vehicle charging during daylight raises the self-consumed share, and unlike equipment choices it costs nothing to change.
Two companies, and only one of them you can change
In the deregulated market you buy electricity from a retail electricity provider, while a separate transmission and distribution utility owns and maintains the poles, wires and meters and restores power after outages. Oncor is the transmission and distribution utility for the Dallas area.
You can change your retail electricity provider. You cannot change your transmission and distribution utility. That distinction explains a lot of confusion, including why switching providers does not change your delivery charges and why an outage is not something your retail provider can fix.
It matters for solar because the two companies have different roles in your project. Interconnection and metering involve the delivery utility, while your export credit is a term of your retail plan. Ask your installer which steps involve which company and what the expected timing is for each.
Keep the paperwork from both. When something goes wrong months later, knowing whether it is a metering question or a billing question tells you which number to call and saves a great deal of time.
The exemption you have to claim, and the credit that ended
Texas Tax Code Section 11.27 exempts 100 percent of the appraised home value added by an installed solar energy device from property tax. It is not automatic. Form 50-123 must be filed with your county appraisal district, and the deadline for the current tax year is generally April 30.
Ask whether your installer assists with the filing, and put the deadline in your own calendar regardless. An exemption you qualified for and never claimed is the most avoidable cost in a Texas solar project, and unlike the rest of the arithmetic it is entirely within your control.
The federal position has changed and a great deal of published material has not caught up. The 30 percent Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so a cash or loan purchase now does not receive it. A quote that still applies it is overstating your return substantially.
Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements, so such a provider may claim it and reflect part of that value in the rate they offer. What they claim and what actually reaches you are separate questions, so ask both and confirm with a tax advisor rather than with the sales material.