Read your current contract before anything else
Before you talk about panels, find your current electricity contract and establish two things: when the term ends, and what leaving early would cost. Texas retail contracts commonly carry an early termination fee, and it is a real number in the decision.
Then find out whether your existing plan buys back exported solar at all. Many do not. A household that installs solar without changing plans can end up exporting power for nothing, which is a quiet and entirely avoidable loss.
Texas has no statewide net-metering mandate, so nothing obliges a provider to credit your exports. Compensation depends on the retail electricity provider and the specific solar buyback plan selected, which means the plan is something you have to go and get rather than something that arrives with the panels.
PowerToChoose.org is the state-run comparison site and the sensible place to see what is actually available at your address, without a sales conversation attached to the answer.
Line the switch up with the switch-on
The goal is simple: be on a solar buyback plan by the time your system is producing, and not much before. Getting there takes a little coordination between your installer's schedule and your contract dates.
Ask your installer for a realistic date for permission to operate rather than for the installation date. Those are different milestones, and the second one is what matters for your plan. A system on the roof that is not yet cleared to export is not yet using a buyback plan.
If your current contract ends near that date, the cleanest path is usually to let it run out and switch to a buyback plan as it ends. If it has a long way to run, weigh the early termination fee against the exports you would otherwise give away, using an honest production estimate rather than an optimistic one.
Do the arithmetic before you commit to an installation date, because the installation date is the input you can still move. It is much easier to schedule around a contract than to unwind a contract around a schedule.
Judging a buyback plan once you find one
Compare the export rate and the plan energy rate together, never separately. Across a year most households buy considerably more electricity than they export, so the energy rate usually moves the annual bill more than the export rate does.
Check how credits accumulate. Some plans credit exported energy without a cap and roll credits over, and some cap the credit that can accumulate, after which further exported generation earns nothing. A cap changes the sensible size of a system, because production beyond it is worth zero to you.
Check the term and what happens at its end, since you will be doing this again. A plan that looks excellent for twelve months and then rolls into something poor is only good if you remember to act, so diarise the end date the day you sign.
Then ask your installer to model the system against the specific plan you intend to be on. A projection that does not name a plan is not a projection about your house.
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.