New York’s hottest solar incentive is the NY-Sun Megawatt Block Program. It has everything – residential rebates based on solar system size, payments for commercial projects, and even adders for community solar development. Homeowners can earn thousands of dollars through the Megawatt Block program to help reduce the upfront cost of installing solar panels, making it one of the biggest reasons why going solar in New York is such a worthwhile investment.
The Megawatt Block incentives are part of the state’s NY-Sun initiative, a program developed by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to make clean energy more accessible to New Yorkers. Aside from providing incentives, NY-Sun also helps with project financing and education and gives resources to local governments to help achieve initiative goals.
For all the good it does, the incentive program can be a little confusing to understand at first. That’s why we’ve broken down everything you need to know about the residential Megawatt Block incentive, including how it works and even better – how much you could save.
How the Megawatt Block Incentive program works
The Megawatt Block program provides home and business owners who install solar panels with an incentive based on where they live and the size of the solar panel system, measured in watts. We’re going to focus on the incentives for residential solar projects.
In order to qualify for the residential incentive, the solar panel system must be installed by a participating NY-Sun contractor and cannot exceed 25 kilowatts (kW) in size. You probably won’t have to worry much about this requirement – the average home solar panel system installed in New York is about 7 kW. The system also cannot be projected to generate more than 110% of your annual electricity usage, but this will be something your installer will consider when designing the system.
NY-Sun splits the state into three regions, each of which receives a different amount of funding for the Megawatt Block incentives. The regions are:
On average, the incentive value will be somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000. But remember, the exact incentive you receive will vary based on the size of your system and what region you are in.
