Why anybody wants your certificates
The Virginia Clean Economy Act, signed on April 12, 2020, set a Renewable Portfolio Standard requiring Dominion Energy to reach 100 percent renewable electricity by 2045 and Appalachian Power by 2050.
The part that matters to a homeowner is narrower: at least 1 percent of Dominion's requirement each year must come from in-state distributed generation resources smaller than 1 MW. Rooftop residential systems are exactly what that describes.
So demand for your certificates comes from a compliance obligation rather than from goodwill, which is what makes it a market with a price rather than a token payment.
It also means the price moves with how that obligation and the supply of certificates interact. Treat any SREC income in a savings projection as a forecast rather than a payment, and ask what price the model assumes and where the figure came from.
How you actually sell them
To sell certificates in Virginia you register your system and work with a broker. That registration is a separate step from your building permit and from your interconnection with the utility, and none of the three does the others.
Ask your installer in writing whether they handle the registration and the broker arrangement, and ask to be sent confirmations rather than told it is done. A system that is generating but not registered is not earning certificates.
A useful feature of the Virginia market: a seller does not have to be a Dominion Energy or Appalachian Power customer to sell into it. So the market is open regardless of who bills you, including if a cooperative does.
Certificates are eligible to be sold for 5 years. That puts a boundary on holding for a better price, so a strategy of waiting is a timed bet rather than an open-ended one.
And the side that arrives automatically
Virginia Code Section 56-594 compensates a residential system of not more than 25 kW one-to-one at the retail rate for electricity exported to the grid. That is as favourable as net metering gets, and it stacks with certificate income rather than replacing it.
Systems are typically sized not to exceed the customer's annual consumption, so ask every installer to work from your last twelve months of bills and to show the calculation.
If Dominion Energy bills you, note the sizing threshold that comes with it: residential systems greater than 15 kW AC are subject to standby charges, with the amount depending on peak power demand used on site. Appalachian Power and cooperative customers are not subject to demand charges.
Ask for the net metering savings and the certificate income to be shown separately across a year rather than as a single combined figure. Only the first is set by statute.
Ask your locality about the property tax exemption
Virginia Code Section 58.1-3661 allows any county, city or town to exempt or partially exempt certified solar energy equipment from local property taxes by adopting an ordinance. This is the detail most often got wrong about Virginia solar, because it is a local option rather than a statewide rule.
So a guide that tells you Virginia exempts solar from property tax is only right where the locality has actually adopted an ordinance, and it may be a partial exemption rather than a full one. Ask your county or city commissioner of the revenue directly whether an ordinance is in place and what it covers.
Where adopted, the exemption is effective beginning in the next succeeding tax year and is permitted for a term of not less than five years. Ask what term applies locally, since that is the horizon you can actually count on.
On the federal side, 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 receives no federal credit. Section 48E survives at 30 percent for third-party owners under leases and power purchase agreements, so ask any such provider what they claim and what of that value reaches you, and confirm with a tax advisor.