Texas Solar Buyback Plans, Explained — With Verified Numbers
If you own solar in Texas and you’re not sure which electricity plan you should be on, you’re in good company — it’s one of the most-asked questions among Texas solar owners, and the honest answer is genuinely hard to find. Comparison sites rank plans by the advertised buyback rate, which is close to meaningless once caps and expiration rules kick in. Providers change terms without much notice. And if you’re like most of our neighbors here in Central Texas, half the advice you read doesn’t even apply to you — because you’re not in the deregulated market at all.
Meanwhile the worry is real: if your system exports power and your plan pays you nothing — or pays you and then quietly zeroes the credit out at year-end — you’re leaving money on the table every sunny day.
This page is our working answer. Aether Energy is a licensed Central Texas electrical contractor (TECL #35881) that services solar systems every week, and we maintain a live, continuously re-verified database of Texas buyback plans and utility solar programs — the same data our own analysis engine uses. Below: how buyback actually works, what’s currently true utility by utility, and how to figure out what your system should be earning.
Which market are you actually in?
Most Texas solar advice silently assumes you can shop between retail electricity providers (REPs). Most of Central Texas can’t. Your address puts you in exactly one of two worlds, and everything else on this page depends on which:
Utility territory (most of our service area). If your electric bill comes from Austin Energy, CPS Energy (San Antonio), New Braunfels Utilities, the City of San Marcos, or a co-op like PEC, Bluebonnet, or GVEC — you don’t choose a plan. Your utility has one solar program, set by its board, and your job is simply to understand it (and to make sure your system is enrolled and performing). REP “solar buyback plans” do not apply to you, no matter what a comparison site says after you type in your zip.
Deregulated territory (Oncor and CenterPoint delivery areas). If your bill names a retail provider (TXU, Reliant, Green Mountain, Rhythm, Octopus, and dozens more) with Oncor or CenterPoint as the delivery company, you shop. Here the buyback plan you pick genuinely changes what your solar is worth — and the differences between plans are much bigger than the advertised rates suggest.
Not sure which you’re in? The utility name on your bill answers it — or send us the bill and we’ll tell you as part of the free evaluation.
How solar buyback actually works in Texas.
Texas has no statewide net metering mandate. What you get for exported power is whatever your utility program or retail plan says, and the mechanics matter more than the headline rate:
Why the advertised rate is the wrong number.
Here’s the thing comparison sites get wrong, and the reason our engine is built the way it is: a buyback rate is not a plan. A “full retail rate!” plan with a monthly credit cap can pay you less over a year than a modest fixed-rate plan with real rollover — because your system doesn’t export evenly. It over-produces in spring, gets crushed by your AC in August, and the caps and expiration rules operate month by month.
That’s why our analysis engine never ranks plans by advertised rate. It simulates your actual year, month by month: your import costs at real disclosure price points, your export credits under each plan’s actual method, credits hitting each plan’s actual cap, and what happens to the excess — banked, rolled, or forfeited. The output is the only number that matters: true net annual cost on your usage. The same simulation quantifies forfeited credit — and when a plan is throwing away a meaningful chunk of your export value, that’s also exactly the evidence that tells you whether a home battery would pay for itself by soaking up what the grid won’t buy fairly. (Deep-dive: our home battery comparison.)
Utility by utility — what’s true right now.
Everything below comes from our live plan database. Each record carries a verification status — EFL-verified (checked against the provider’s legal disclosure document), site-verified (confirmed on the utility’s or provider’s own page), or indicative (seeded from research, verification queued) — and its last-verified date. We show you that status instead of hiding it. Data vintage: 2026-08-04.
Austin Energy (Austin) — Value of Solar: your entire production earns 9.91¢/kWh while you buy all consumption at retail; credits carry forward month to month with no expiration. [Site-verified against austinenergy.com, 2026-08-04.] Unusual nationally, and reasonably solar-friendly — the practical questions are system sizing and performance, not plan-shopping.
CPS Energy (San Antonio) — solar billing on a net-plus-surplus structure: exports offset consumption, surplus is credited at an avoided-cost rate. We are not publishing a rate figure here yet — our sources currently conflict on the exact billing mechanics, our verification ladder flags the record accordingly, and we don’t print numbers we can’t stand behind. EFL-level verification is queued; this section updates when it resolves. (San Antonio owners: this is exactly the situation the free evaluation exists for — we’ll run your actual bills.)
New Braunfels Utilities (NBU) — solar program with a fixed-credit structure; rate verification in progress. [Indicative — full verification queued.]
San Marcos Electric Utility — program details not yet in our verified set; on the verification schedule.
Co-ops (PEC, Bluebonnet, GVEC) — each sets its own solar billing terms; our records for these are on the weekly verification rotation. Co-op terms have historically been the most volatile in our corridor — check the current stamp before deciding anything.
Deregulated Oncor / CenterPoint areas — our database currently tracks the active solar-buyback plan universe, including (as of 2026-08-04): TXU’s Solar Buyback Match 36 (retail-match, monthly rollover, credits capped at energy charges, 36-month term, $395 ETF — site-verified), TXU Solar Buyback Plus 24 (6¢ fixed credit, energy-charges cap — site-verified), TXU Solar Buyback Saver 24 (3.5¢ fixed — indicative), Green Mountain Renewable Rewards 36 (retail-match — indicative), Rhythm’s month-to-month solar buyback (retail-match but credits expire annually — indicative), Octopus’s buyback with indefinite rollover (indicative), and Reliant Solar Payback in CenterPoint territory (retail-match, capped, no rollover — indicative). Notice how every “retail match” plan differs in exactly the mechanics — caps, rollover, term — that decide what you actually keep.
Which of these is “best”? Wrong question — and any site that crowns one is guessing. The ranking flips with your usage shape, your system’s export profile, and whether you have (or should have) a battery. A high-exporter with a capped match plan and a low-exporter on the same plan get completely different outcomes. That’s not a dodge; it’s arithmetic. The free evaluation runs your numbers.
What we verify, and how often.
Why trust this page over a comparison site? Because it isn’t copywriting — it’s a view into a working system:
We built this because we got tired of doing solar service calls for people whose plan was quietly costing them hundreds a year — and because “trust me” isn’t a rate methodology.
What your setup should actually earn.
The generic answer stops here; the specific one is free. Send us a recent electric bill and, if you have it, a production screenshot from your monitoring app. A licensed Central Texas solar service contractor — not a lead-gen site — runs your usage against the verified plan database and tells you: what market you’re in, what your current plan is really costing you per year, whether forfeited credits are eating your production, and whether a battery would change the math. No truck roll, no sales visit, no cost.
System underproducing instead? That’s a repair question, not a plan question — book the $249 diagnostic, credited 100% toward your repair.
Texas solar buyback, answered.
What’s the best solar buyback plan in Texas?
There isn’t one — and that’s the honest answer, not a hedge. Plans rank differently depending on your monthly usage shape, how much your system exports, caps and rollover rules, and whether you have a battery. A plan that’s excellent for a low-exporter can forfeit hundreds of dollars a year for a high-exporter. The only reliable method is simulating your actual usage month by month against each plan’s real mechanics — which is what our free evaluation does.
Am I leaving money on the table without a buyback plan?
If you’re in deregulated territory (Oncor/CenterPoint) and exporting solar on a plan with no export credit — very likely yes; every exported kWh is given away. In utility territory (Austin, CPS, NBU, co-ops) there’s nothing to switch to, but you should confirm you’re correctly enrolled in your utility’s solar billing and that your system is actually performing.
Why can’t I get a free-nights plan with solar buyback anymore?
Texas solar owners have noticed that most providers in Central Texas no longer offer nights-free plans combined with solar buyback. Structurally it made sense for providers to withdraw them: solar owners import little during the day and a lot at night, so free-nights-plus-buyback paid out on both ends. Worth knowing: a free-nights plan without buyback is usually one of the worst possible plans for a solar home — your daytime exports earn nothing.
What is CPS Energy’s solar buyback rate?
CPS uses a net-plus-surplus structure: exports offset your consumption, and surplus is credited at an avoided-cost rate that’s well below retail. We’re not publishing an exact figure until our verification process resolves a conflict between current sources — when our data can’t clear our own bar, we say so. San Antonio owners can get their actual numbers through the free evaluation.
What is Austin Energy’s solar buyback?
Austin Energy uses a Value-of-Solar rate: all of your production — not just exports — earns 9.91¢/kWh (site-verified 2026-08-04), while you purchase all consumption at standard rates. Credits carry forward with no expiration.
Do solar buyback credits expire?
Depends entirely on the plan: some bank credits indefinitely, some roll month to month, some expire annually, and capped plans can forfeit credits every single month. Credit expiration and caps — not the advertised rate — are where most solar owners lose money.
Does a battery change which plan I should be on?
Often dramatically. A battery lets you consume exports the grid would underpay or forfeit, which reshapes the ranking — and if your current plan is forfeiting significant credit value, that forfeited amount is itself the business case for the battery. We quantify both sides in the evaluation.
Is solar buyback the same as net metering?
No. Traditional net metering (rare in Texas) nets exports against imports at full retail with few strings. Texas “buyback” is a plan-by-plan contract term — the method, rate, caps, and rollover are whatever the plan says, which is why reading the actual disclosure document matters.
Real repair, real result: the Steiner Ranch solar rescue — rodent-damaged wiring found and fixed after the original installer vanished.