Solar Installation in Nashville, TN
We install solar across Nashville and Middle Tennessee. Tennessee has no net metering and the homeowner credit has gone, so the arithmetic that sells solar in other states does not run in this one.
about 2 cents per kWh
Sold to TVA, about 2 cents Bought from NES, 11.86 cents
Middle Tennessee Electric and Nashville Electric Service, checked 2026-08-16
Why are people getting rid of their solar panels?
Google keeps returning this question in Nashville solar results and no page in those results answers it. Three things are behind most of it, and only one is about the panels.
People try to exit leases and power purchase agreements they signed without fully reading. People are told an array makes a roof replacement impossible, which is a solar panel removal and reinstall job with a known sequence rather than a dead end. And people have systems that quietly stopped producing, were never diagnosed, and became a thing on the roof that earns nothing.
The longer version, including what it means for resale, is in why people get rid of solar panels .
Is the 30% solar tax credit going away in 2026?
The IRS states that the residential clean energy credit is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025 (IRS, checked 2026-08-04). It is not going away. For a homeowner buying with cash or a loan it has already gone, and that is the single most important fact on this page.
Some quotes still circulating were built on it. If a price you have been shown is net of a federal credit, ask which credit is meant, because a business installing solar is on a different statute from a household. We set out what remains in the Tennessee solar tax credit position in 2026 , and what a system costs without it in solar panel cost in Nashville.
What is the 33% rule in solar panels?
This one comes back more often than any other, and most of the pages answering it have it backwards. It is not a limit on how much roof you may cover. It is a threshold in the residential code: below about a third of the roof's plan view area, the clear strip the code wants along each side of the ridge is 18 inches, and above it that strip doubles to 36 inches. Sprinkler the house and the threshold moves. Pitch the roof shallow enough and the section does not apply at all.
That bare strip in the photograph is the rule made visible, and it exists so a fire crew can reach the ridge. Which edition of the code you are held to depends on which permit office you fall under, and inside this metro that genuinely differs. The code text, the section numbers and the local adoption are set out on the removal and reinstall page , because a reinstall is the job where it bites hardest.
What happens to the power you do not use
Tennessee has no net metering. Excess generation is bought by TVA under its Dispersed Power Production programme, administered by your local power company, at a price set by avoided cost. Middle Tennessee Electric tells its members that a qualified system can contract with TVA to sell that excess for roughly 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, and that the contract takes two to three months to put in place (MTE, checked 2026-08-04).
Now the other side. Nashville Electric Service publishes a residential base rate of 9.254 cents per kilowatt-hour, effective October 2024, plus a fuel cost adjustment it resets every month, listed at 2.610 cents for August (NES, checked 2026-08-14). So power leaves at about 2 cents and comes back at about 12.
Which utility you are on is decided by your address, and the two run different programmes. How the programme itself works is covered in TVA net metering in Tennessee.
Why a battery reads differently here
In a net metering state, exporting and importing are close to the same trade, so storage is mostly about outages. Here they are not the same trade at all. Every kilowatt-hour a battery keeps on your side of the meter is the difference between the two figures above, which is why storage comes up early in this market rather than as an upsell at the end.
Whether it pays on your roof is an arithmetic question about your own export volume, and it is answerable from a power bill in a few minutes. Sometimes the answer is no. Solar battery installation covers how we work it out and what whole-home backup actually costs to size.
Solar services
Four jobs, and they split into putting something new on a roof and dealing with an array that is already there. All solar services lists them with what each one involves.
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Solar panel repair
Find out why a system stopped producing before deciding what to replace.
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Battery installation
Keep the power you make instead of selling it at avoided cost.
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Removal and reinstall
Take the array off for a roof replacement and put it back to code.
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Commercial solar
Low-slope roofs, sealed structural plans, and a different tax position.
Find out what this does on your roof
Send the address, a photo of the roof and a recent power bill. What comes back is a scope and a number, with the assumptions written down. If the numbers say the job is not worth doing this year, we say that instead.