The thirty percent credit has closed
This is the single most consequential fact on this site, and it is the one most likely to be wrong on whatever page you read before this one. A federal credit that paid nearly a third of a home battery is no longer available for anything switched on from the start of this year, which moves a typical payback date by years.
What the rule says
Quoted from the source document, retrieved 2026-08-06
“The Residential Clean Energy Credit equals 30% of the costs of new, qualified clean energy property for your home installed anytime from 2022 through December 31, 2025. The credit is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025.”
Three separate tests are packed into that sentence and only the last one is about your calendar: the property has to be qualified, it has to have been installed inside the stated window, and it has to have been PLACED IN SERVICE by the stated date — which is why a quote dated inside the window proves nothing on its own.
The phrase carrying the weight is the one that sounds like boilerplate. “Placed in service” is not the date on a contract, a deposit, a delivery note, a permit application or an invoice. Every one of those documents is easier to produce than a commissioning record, and every one of them is routinely offered in place of it.
The Residential Clean Energy Credit equalled 30 percent [1] of the cost of qualifying clean energy property installed from 2022 through the end of 2025, and it is not available for any property placed in service after 2025-12-31. For a system commissioned today the rate is 0 percent [2].
Battery storage became eligible in its own right from tax year 2023 [4], meaning a pack no longer had to be attached to a solar array to qualify. It needed a capacity of at least 3 kilowatt-hours [3], which every household pack clears. There was no annual or lifetime dollar cap outside a specific fuel-cell provision.
Quoted from the source document, retrieved 2026-08-06
“Battery storage technology must have a capacity of at least 3 kilowatt hours.”
That line reads like an exclusion and behaves like one only at the very bottom of the market — every wall-mounted household pack clears it several times over, so it has never decided a residential case; its practical effect was that a portable power station standing in a hallway was not the same purchase for tax purposes, however much it cost.
What the closure does to the rest of the arithmetic on this site
The credit never changed what a battery earns. It changed what a battery costs, which is the other side of the same division, so its removal shows up everywhere this site compares a price against a lifetime total. Recovering $14,000 rather than $9,800 means the same hardware has to earn 42.9 percent more across its warranted life to reach the same verdict — from a pack whose earning capacity has not moved a cent.
That lands hardest on the ceiling test rather than on the payback date. Every pack has a hard upper bound on what it can ever return from bill savings: warranted cycles multiplied by usable capacity multiplied by the widest margin your tariff will ever offer. Quotes that sat comfortably below that bound once the credit was applied can sit above it without one. A payback that merely got longer is a judgement call about horizons. A price above the ceiling is not a judgement call at all, and the closure moved a band of real quotes from the first situation into the second.
The practical consequence for anyone holding an older estimate is sharper than it sounds. The years figure printed on it is not stale by a season; it was computed on a net price that no longer exists for a system commissioned now. Recompute from the gross figure before you compare anything — including two proposals written on opposite sides of the change, which will otherwise look like a difference in installer pricing when it is a difference in tax year.
What that is worth on a real quote
On a $14,000 installation the credit was worth $4,200, bringing the net cost to $9,800. Today the same installation costs the full $14,000.
Run that through the arithmetic and the effect is larger than it first appears. If the system saves six hundred dollars a year, the credit was the difference between a sixteen-year payback and a twenty-three-year one — and a twenty-three-year payback on a fifteen-year warranty is not a payback, it is a purchase.
This is exactly why the payback worksheet on this site defaults the credit to closed and makes you assert otherwise. A calculator that quietly applies a thirty percent discount that no longer exists produces a plausible, confident, wrong number — and the reader has no way to see it.
The three checks worth running on any quote you hold
Look for a credit line in the pricing. If a quote presents a net figure after a federal credit, ask which provision it is claiming and for what placed-in-service date. A quote whose economics only work with that line is a quote whose economics do not work.
Separate the state rebate from the federal credit. They are different mechanisms with different timing and different effects on your taxable position, and a quote that blends them into one savings figure is hiding which is which.
Confirm the commissioning date in writing. Where any credit or rebate turns on when a system is placed in service, the schedule is a financial term, not a logistics detail. Supply-chain slippage across a year boundary has moved real money for real households.
None of the above is tax advice and we are not qualified to give any. It is a set of questions to take to somebody who is, along with the rule as it is currently published.
- State incentivesOne programme, quoted from the regulator, with its own closing dates.
- Rerun the paybackToggle the credit and watch the answer move.
- When it does not clearLosing the credit pushes some cases past the point of no return.
Questions this page gets asked
Does a quote dated before the deadline still qualify?
No. The test is when the property was PLACED IN SERVICE, not when it was quoted, ordered, paid for or delivered. A system bought in one year and commissioned in the next belongs to the year it was switched on. That distinction is doing a great deal of work right now and it is the first thing to check on any quote still showing a credit line.
Was there a dollar cap?
No, and that made it unusually valuable for storage. Unlike the separate credit that covers efficiency improvements, this one had no annual or lifetime dollar limit outside a specific provision for fuel cells, so it scaled with the size of the installation.
What capacity did a battery need to qualify?
At least 3 kilowatt-hours. Every residential pack in ordinary use clears that comfortably, so it rarely excluded anyone — but it is the reason a small portable power station was never eligible.
Do state rebates and export credits affect it?
They behave in opposite directions and are constantly confused. A rebate tied to the cost of the equipment is treated as a reduction of the purchase price, so it reduces the expense the credit is computed on. Ongoing payments for energy you export back to the grid are not, and leave the qualified expense untouched. The payback worksheet on this site applies both rules in that order.
Provenance for every figure printed above
s1.credit_percent_while_open— Internal Revenue Service, Residential Clean Energy Credit — https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/residential-clean-energy-credit (retrieved 2026-08-06)s1.credit_percent_today— Internal Revenue Service, Residential Clean Energy Credit — https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/residential-clean-energy-credit (retrieved 2026-08-06)s1.minimum_capacity_kwh— Internal Revenue Service, Residential Clean Energy Credit — https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/residential-clean-energy-credit (retrieved 2026-08-06)s1.storage_eligible_from— Internal Revenue Service, Residential Clean Energy Credit — https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/residential-clean-energy-credit (retrieved 2026-08-06)