None of the usual Texas advice applies here
El Paso Electric is not part of the deregulated Texas retail electricity market and El Paso is not in the ERCOT grid region. There is no retail electricity provider to choose and no solar buyback plan to shop for.
That single fact invalidates most articles about going solar in Texas, because most of them are written about the deregulated ERCOT market where choosing the right plan is the central decision. Reading that advice and applying it in El Paso does not produce a slightly different answer, it produces an answer to a question you do not face.
It also means comparisons with what a friend in Dallas or Houston pays or receives are not useful. Those households are on plans they selected from competing providers. Your terms are set through a regulated rate process instead.
Use it as a test of an installer as well. Someone who works El Paso regularly will talk about EPE's rate schedules by name. Someone who opens by asking which retail provider you use has not done a project in this city.
Real net metering, under two rate schedules
El Paso Electric states that most customers who install solar panels qualify for EPE's net metering rate, and that this rate nets the amount of renewable energy generated against the consumption received from EPE. That is the arrangement homeowners in most of Texas do not have available to them.
Two schedules do the work. Residential consumption is billed under EPE's T-01 Residential Service Rate. Net production is credited based on EPE's Rate Schedule No. 48, listed as T-48 Non-Firm Purchased Power Service from Distributed Generators.
Ask for both schedules by name and by effective date. T-48 is shown with an effective date of July 1, 2025 and T-01 with an effective date of August 1, 2026, so a quote built on older figures is describing a different set of numbers than the ones that will appear on your bill.
The word non-firm in the T-48 title is a hint worth following. Ask EPE directly how net production is valued under that schedule and whether the treatment differs above a certain level of export, because the answer determines how much a larger array is actually worth to you.
Two things you give up by going solar here
El Paso Electric states that customers with solar cannot participate in the Texas Community Solar Program or the Budget Billing Plan. Neither of those is usually mentioned in a sales conversation and one of them has real consequences.
Losing Budget Billing is the one to think about. Budget Billing exists to level out seasonal swings so that a brutal El Paso summer does not arrive as a single enormous bill. Going solar means giving that up, and while a well-sized system should reduce those summer peaks, your bills will vary month to month again.
That is not an argument against solar, but it is a change to how your household budgets, and it should be a decision you made rather than a surprise on your first summer bill. Ask your installer to show projected monthly bills across a full year rather than an annual average.
EPE also notes that Texas bills do not have the REC meter readings, so do not expect your renewable energy credit production to appear as a line on the bill. If RECs matter to you, ask EPE how they are handled and get the answer before you sign an interconnection agreement.
The exemption you must file for, and the rest
Texas Tax Code Section 11.27 exempts 100 percent of the appraised home value added by an installed solar energy device from property tax. This one requires an action: Form 50-123 must be filed with your county appraisal district, and the deadline for the current tax year is generally April 30.
Nobody files it for you automatically. Ask your installer whether they assist with it, diarise the deadline regardless, and treat it as part of the project rather than paperwork to get to eventually. It is the most avoidable cost in a Texas solar installation.
The federal position has changed. The 30 percent Residential Clean Energy Credit under Section 25D expired for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, so a purchase now does not receive it. 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 the value in the rate they offer. Ask what they claim and what reaches you, and confirm with a tax advisor rather than with the sales material.
If you are in an association, Texas Property Code Section 202.010 forbids it from prohibiting you from installing a solar energy device, though it retains specific powers including over placement outside the roof, a fenced yard or a patio, and over a roof-mounted device extending higher than or beyond the roofline. Submit a specific application with layout and mounting detail rather than a general request.