If you have been weighing solar in Gaithersburg, the calendar now matters as much as the math. Maryland is about to change how it pays rooftop solar owners, and the homes that connect first lock in today’s better deal. This page covers what going solar in Gaithersburg, MD actually involves in 2026: which utility you are on (it is Pepco, not BGE), the real electricity rate after a recent state correction, how Pepco net metering credits you and what the 2027 sunset changes, the Maryland incentives you can still stack, the fact that Gaithersburg issues your permits itself, and how to screen an installer, so you can check your address in about a minute. Updated for 2026.
Is solar worth it in Gaithersburg in 2026? For most homes, yes. At Pepco’s corrected rate of about 22.2 cents per kWh, a typical system pays back in roughly 7 to 8 years once Maryland SRECs are counted, and connecting before the July 2027 net-metering sunset locks in today’s terms.
- The clock is the story: Maryland’s full-value net metering sunsets July 1, 2027. A system interconnected before then is grandfathered at today’s near-retail export credit; new energy legislation (Senate Bill 843, the SUNRISE Act) signed in April 2026 ends the current program on that date or at a 3 gigawatt statewide cap, whichever comes first (Maryland General Assembly, SB 843, as of 2026).
- Your electric utility is Pepco, not BGE. Gaithersburg sits in Pepco’s Maryland service territory, so Pepco runs your net metering and interconnection (Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, as of 2026).
- The rate that makes solar pay is real, and it was just corrected. Maryland residential electricity averaged about 22.2 cents per kWh in March 2026, after EIA fixed an erroneous 35 cent figure that the state’s own regulators flagged (Maryland PSC, as of June 2026).
- Gaithersburg permits your solar through its own city office. As a separately incorporated city, Gaithersburg issues your solar building and electrical permits itself, not through Montgomery County (City of Gaithersburg solar permits, as of 2026).
- The incentive stack is real, but the old $1,000 state rebate is gone. Maryland SRECs (recently about $40 to $48 each), a 6 percent sales-tax exemption, and a property-tax exemption still apply; the flat $1,000 Residential Clean Energy Rebate closed to new applicants in late 2024 (EnergySage Maryland, as of 2026).
- The 30 percent federal homeowner credit ended December 31, 2025. A 2026 cash or loan buyer cannot claim it, so we do not count it in the savings math (IRS Residential Clean Energy Credit, as of 2026).
Why the July 2027 deadline is the most important number on this page
Solar in Gaithersburg pays mostly because of net metering, and Maryland has set a date to make it less generous. Right now, when your roof sends extra power to the grid, Pepco credits you in kilowatt-hours valued near the full retail rate, and those credits roll forward month to month. In April 2026, Maryland passed sweeping energy legislation (Senate Bill 843, known as the SUNRISE Act, alongside companion measures) that ends the current net-metering program on July 1, 2027, or once the state hits a 3 gigawatt cap of enrolled solar, whichever comes first (Maryland General Assembly, SB 843, as of 2026). After that, the Public Service Commission must stand up a successor program that pays distributed solar a “value to grid” rate that is widely expected to land below today’s one-for-one retail credit (CCAN Action Fund summary of the 2026 law, as of 2026).
The part that should drive your timing: systems interconnected before the sunset are grandfathered at today’s terms. That means a Gaithersburg home that completes its Pepco interconnection before the cutoff keeps the current near-retail credit, while a neighbor who waits may be enrolled on the less favorable successor rate. The exact successor rules are not final yet, so treat this as a reason to start early rather than a precise dollar figure. The statewide mechanics live on our Maryland solar guide and how net metering credits your solar exports.
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Your Gaithersburg electric utility is Pepco
For almost every Gaithersburg address, your electric utility is Pepco (Potomac Electric Power Company), and Pepco is who handles your solar net metering. Maryland assigns each utility an exclusive electric service territory, and Gaithersburg and most of Montgomery County sit in Pepco’s territory (Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, as of 2026). This is worth stating plainly because it is easy to get wrong: BGE serves the Baltimore region and central Maryland, not Gaithersburg, so guidance written for “Maryland on BGE” does not describe your bill.
One local caveat for up-county homes. A small slice of upper Montgomery County, out toward Damascus and Poolesville, is served by Potomac Edison rather than Pepco, so if your home is well north or west of the city it is worth confirming the name on your bill before you size a system. If you turn out to be on Potomac Edison, the rules differ, and we cover them on the Potomac Edison Maryland solar page. For the large majority of Gaithersburg, though, the answer is Pepco, and the detailed rate and net-metering rules live on our Pepco net metering in Maryland page.
What Pepco net metering pays you now, and what changes in 2027
Net metering is the engine of your savings, and on a Pepco account it currently credits your exports near full retail value. When your panels make more than your home is using, the surplus flows to the grid and Pepco credits your account in kilowatt-hours valued near the retail rate, rolling forward month to month (Maryland net metering, DSIRE, as of 2026). Maryland lets you size a residential system up to 200 percent of your annual usage, though most homeowners size nearer to what they actually use. Once a year, any leftover surplus is cashed out at the utility’s lower generation rate rather than full retail, but a 2024 law (the Net Metering Flexibility Act, Senate Bill 143) lets you instead elect to bank credits indefinitely at full value, so ask your installer which option fits your usage (Energy Select on SB 143, as of 2026).
| Net-metering feature | Interconnect before July 1, 2027 | After the 2027 sunset |
|---|---|---|
| Export credit value | About 1:1, near full retail (~22 cents per kWh) | A PSC “value to grid” rate, expected below retail |
| A system built now | Grandfathered at today’s terms | Not applicable |
| Year-end surplus | Cash-out at the lower generation rate, or elect indefinite full-value rollover (SB 143) | Set by the successor program |
| Interconnection | Filed through Pepco; no fee for inverter systems of 10 kW or less | Through Pepco under successor rules |
Note: the deadline is real, but the successor rate is not final. Maryland has set the July 1, 2027 sunset in law, and grandfathering rewards connecting early. What it has not done is publish the exact “value to grid” rate that replaces today’s credit, so do not let any installer quote you a precise post-2027 number as if it were settled. The honest planning move is to start the permitting and interconnection process with time to spare, not to bank on a figure no one has yet.
Why your Pepco rate makes solar worth it (and the rate correction that made news)
The reason solar pays in Gaithersburg is the price of the power it replaces. Maryland residential electricity averaged about 22.2 cents per kWh in March 2026, which runs above the national average of 18.83 cents (EIA Electric Power Monthly, March 2026). That 22.2 cent figure is worth a short story, because a lot of competing pages still show the wrong one. In a March 2026 report, EIA mistakenly listed Maryland at about 35 cents per kWh, the second highest in the country and an 89 percent jump; the Maryland Public Service Commission’s analysts caught the error, and on June 3, 2026 EIA revised the figure down to 22.2 cents (Maryland PSC, as of June 2026). We use the corrected number. Pepco has also raised its Maryland delivery rates, so the trend on your bill has been up, and every kilowatt-hour your roof makes offsets one you would otherwise buy at that rising rate.
Your production is what turns that high rate into savings. Greater Washington gets meaningfully more sun than the Northeast, and Gaithersburg’s up-county neighborhoods skew toward newer, detached single-family homes with larger, less shaded roofs than the older inner-Beltway suburbs, which is good for solar. A Maryland regional specific-yield estimate, based on NREL PVWatts modeling for the state rather than a run on your address, puts annual output around 1,300 kWh per kW of panels in year one (NREL PVWatts methodology, Maryland regional average, as of 2026), but that is a planning figure, not a promise for your roof. Your real production depends on your roof’s pitch, orientation, and shading, which only a site visit can measure.
What solar could save a Gaithersburg home: our own estimate
Here is our own calculation for Gaithersburg, with every input shown, so you can follow the math. We combine the corrected Maryland rate, a Maryland regional production estimate, a typical installed cost, and the Maryland SREC market. We label the result an estimate and state the assumptions; your real number depends on your roof, your usage, and your financing.
Inputs and their sources:
- Rate: 22.2 cents per kWh, the corrected Maryland residential average for March 2026 (Maryland PSC).
- Production: about 1,300 kWh per installed kW per year, a Maryland regional specific-yield estimate using NREL PVWatts methodology, not a per-address model run (NREL PVWatts, Maryland regional average, as of 2026).
- Installed cost: about $2.58 per watt before incentives, the U.S. marketplace average for 2026 (EnergySage, as of 2026). Maryland’s 6 percent sales-tax exemption already keeps this lower than it would otherwise be.
- SRECs: about $45 per certificate, one earned per 1,000 kWh produced, market-set (Flett Exchange Maryland SREC market, as of 2026).
| System size | Est. annual production (1,300 kWh/kW) | Year-one bill savings (22.2 cents/kWh) | Est. first-year SREC income (~$45 each) | Est. simple payback with SRECs ($2.58/W) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 kW | about 7,800 kWh | about $1,730 | about $350 (7.8 SRECs) | about 7 to 8 years |
| 8 kW | about 10,400 kWh | about $2,310 | about $470 (10.4 SRECs) | about 7 to 8 years |
| 10 kW | about 13,000 kWh | about $2,890 | about $585 (13 SRECs) | about 7 to 8 years |
Notice the payback barely moves with system size. Because both the cost and the savings scale with the number of panels, a bigger system in Gaithersburg pays back in roughly the same number of years as a smaller one, around 9 years on the bill savings alone and closer to 7 to 8 years once SRECs are counted. What moves the payback is the rate you pay and the incentives you capture, not the size of the array, which is why we build this estimate on your local Pepco rate rather than a national average. For the full method behind numbers like these, see the financial case for whether solar panels are worth it.
Maryland’s incentive stack on a Gaithersburg account (what still pays, what ended)
Beyond net metering, a Gaithersburg homeowner stacks Maryland’s statewide benefits, but the list has changed, and a clean accounting of what is live matters more than a long one. Most of these go to the system owner, so on a lease or PPA the company that owns the panels keeps them, while the Pepco net-metering credit still follows your account. We keep the full statewide detail on our Maryland solar guide and solar incentives pages rather than repeating all of it here.
| Incentive | What it is worth | Status in 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Pepco net metering | Exports credited near full retail (~22 cents/kWh) | Active now; sunsets July 1, 2027, grandfathered if interconnected first |
| Maryland SRECs | About $40 to $48 per 1,000 kWh produced | Active, market-set |
| Maryland sales-tax exemption | About $1,500 to $2,100 off equipment (6 percent) | Active, automatic |
| Maryland property-tax exemption | Solar-added home value is not taxed | Active, automatic |
| Montgomery County property-tax credit | Up to $5,000 (50 percent of device cost) | Funding-capped, often waitlisted; verify availability |
| Maryland Solar Access Program grant | $750 per kW, up to $7,500 | Income-qualified only; FY2026 funds nearly exhausted |
| $1,000 Residential Clean Energy Rebate | $1,000 (historical) | Ended; closed to new applicants since late 2024 |
| Federal residential credit (Section 25D) | 30 percent (historical) | Ended for expenditures after December 31, 2025 |
| Maryland state income-tax credit for solar | Not applicable | Does not exist |
Maryland SRECs are the incentive most people miss. Your system earns one Solar Renewable Energy Certificate for every 1,000 kWh it produces, and you sell those into Maryland’s market, recently around $40 to $48 each (Flett Exchange; EnergySage Maryland, as of 2026). An 8 to 10 kW Gaithersburg system can earn roughly $450 to $880 a year in SRECs in its early years, and an installer or aggregator can register your system and handle the sales. The price is market-set and drifts over time, so treat any single figure as a snapshot.
The Montgomery County credit is real but rationed. Montgomery County offers a residential property-tax credit for solar and other clean-energy devices worth up to $5,000, but the county funds it from a capped annual pool and processes applications first-come, so it is routinely oversubscribed and may be closed when you apply (Montgomery County residential energy incentives, as of 2026). Confirm the current funding status with the Montgomery County Department of Finance before you count on it.
Note: skip the two credits Maryland no longer offers a 2026 buyer. The flat $1,000 Maryland Residential Clean Energy Rebate stopped taking applications in late 2024 and is gone, despite older guides that still list it (EnergySage Maryland, as of 2026). The state’s grant support shifted to the income-qualified Maryland Solar Access Program ($750 per kW up to $7,500), whose 2026 funding was nearly exhausted by spring, so check directly with the Maryland Energy Administration before assuming it (Maryland Energy Administration, as of 2026). And the 30 percent federal residential credit (Section 25D) ended for expenditures after December 31, 2025, so a Gaithersburg homeowner who buys with cash or a loan in 2026 cannot claim it; see what the end of the federal solar tax credit means in 2026. We are not a tax advisor, so confirm your own situation with a professional.
Gaithersburg permits your solar through its own city office
Here is a Gaithersburg detail that even many local installers handle differently than they would one town over: the City of Gaithersburg issues your solar permits itself. Because Gaithersburg is a separately incorporated city, its own Permitting and Inspections Division reviews and issues the building and electrical permits for residential rooftop solar inside city limits, rather than Montgomery County’s Department of Permitting Services (City of Gaithersburg solar permits, as of 2026). The county runs a fast automated path (its eSolar and SolarAPP+ process) for the unincorporated areas it covers, which is the route a nearby community like Silver Spring takes to go solar, but for a Gaithersburg address the city is your permitting authority, and the city has set up a process for licensed contractors to apply for standard residential rooftop solar permits.
What that means in practice. A solar project on a Gaithersburg home typically needs both a building permit and an electrical permit from the city, pulled by your licensed installer, before any panels go up, with a city inspection afterward and Pepco’s interconnection and meter swap to finish. A good installer will already know the City of Gaithersburg’s process and price it into the timeline. When you compare quotes, it is fair to ask each installer to confirm they pull city permits, not county ones, for your address, and that they handle the Pepco interconnection paperwork too.
How to screen a Gaithersburg solar installer
Judge installers on objective criteria rather than a ranking, because the right company for your roof is a local decision. The Gaithersburg search results are crowded with national directories and lead brokers, so use a short, concrete checklist instead of a “best of” list:
- A Maryland Home Improvement Commission (MHIC) license, which residential contractors in Maryland are required to carry, plus proof of insurance.
- NABCEP certification, the solar industry’s recognized installer credential, on the team doing the work.
- Clear equipment and workmanship warranties in writing, and who honors them if the installer closes.
- A real local track record in Montgomery County, including familiarity with the City of Gaithersburg permit process and Pepco interconnection.
- A written estimate that shows the net-metering and SREC assumptions behind its savings claims, so you can check them against this page.
Our guide to the right questions to ask a solar installer walks through each of these. MySolarFY does not rank or sell installers; we match you with licensed companies that serve your address so you can compare on these criteria yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Who is my electric utility in Gaithersburg, MD?
For almost every Gaithersburg address, your electric utility is Pepco (Potomac Electric Power Company), which delivers your power and administers your solar net metering (Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, as of 2026). BGE serves the Baltimore area, not Gaithersburg, so guidance written for BGE will not match your bill. One exception: a small part of upper Montgomery County near Damascus and Poolesville is on Potomac Edison, so if your home is well north of the city, check the name on your bill before sizing a system.
Is net metering ending in Maryland?
The current program is changing, not vanishing. Maryland’s 2026 SUNRISE Act (Senate Bill 843) ends today’s net-metering program on July 1, 2027, or once the state reaches a 3 gigawatt cap, whichever comes first, and directs regulators to replace it with a “value to grid” rate expected to pay less than today’s near-retail credit (Maryland General Assembly, SB 843, as of 2026). Systems interconnected before the sunset are grandfathered at current terms, which is the reason to start early if solar already makes sense for your home.
How much do solar panels cost in Gaithersburg, and what is the payback?
A typical installed price is around $2.58 per watt before incentives, so a mid-size 8 kW system runs roughly $20,000 to $21,000, and Maryland’s sales-tax exemption helps keep it there (EnergySage, as of 2026). At the corrected 22.2 cent Maryland rate and a regional production estimate, our own calculation puts the simple payback around 9 years on bill savings alone, and closer to 7 to 8 years once Maryland SRECs are included. Those are estimates with the inputs shown above, not a quote; your roof, usage, and financing change the result.
Does the $1,000 Maryland solar rebate still exist?
No. The flat $1,000 Maryland Residential Clean Energy Rebate closed to new applicants in late 2024 and is no longer available, even though some older guides still list it (EnergySage Maryland, as of 2026). The state’s grant support moved to the income-qualified Maryland Solar Access Program ($750 per kW, up to $7,500), whose 2026 funding was nearly used up by spring, so confirm availability with the Maryland Energy Administration before counting on it (Maryland Energy Administration, as of 2026).
Did the 30 percent federal solar tax credit end?
Yes. The federal residential solar credit (Section 25D) ended for expenditures made after December 31, 2025, so a Gaithersburg homeowner who pays cash or finances a purchase in 2026 cannot claim it (IRS, as of 2026). A separate commercial credit can apply to a leased or third-party-owned system and is claimed by the company that owns the panels, not by you. We are not a tax advisor; confirm your situation with a professional, and see what the end of the federal solar tax credit means in 2026.
Do I get my solar permit from Gaithersburg or Montgomery County?
From the City of Gaithersburg. Because Gaithersburg is a separately incorporated city, its own Permitting and Inspections Division issues the building and electrical permits for rooftop solar inside city limits, not Montgomery County’s permitting office (City of Gaithersburg solar permits, as of 2026). Your licensed installer pulls those city permits, and the project also needs Pepco’s interconnection approval and meter swap before it goes live. When comparing installers, confirm each one handles City of Gaithersburg permits for your address.
Ready to see your own numbers? This page shows the Gaithersburg math; the live version uses your roof, your Pepco rate, and the programs that apply at your address. See the solar programs available in your ZIP code, and we will match you with licensed installers who serve Gaithersburg.
Reviewed by the MySolarFY team for 2026. Figures were verified against the linked Maryland (Maryland PSC, Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, Maryland General Assembly, Maryland Energy Administration), Pepco, DSIRE, EIA, NREL, IRS, City of Gaithersburg, and Montgomery County sources as of June 2026; the Maryland electricity rate, the net-metering sunset rules, the SREC market, and the county and state incentive programs can change, so confirm current terms with Pepco, the City of Gaithersburg Permitting and Inspections Division, and the cited agencies before you decide. MySolarFY does not provide tax or financial advice; consult a licensed professional about your own situation. Learn more about the MySolarFY team and how we work.
MySolarFY is a free service that matches homeowners with licensed solar installers. We are not an installer, financing company, tax advisor, or government program. “No up-front cost” refers to qualifying lease or PPA financing where eligible, not free solar, and solar panels are not free. A lease or PPA can run 20 to 25 years, may include an annual price escalator, and may cost more over its term than paying cash; a lease or PPA customer does not receive the federal tax credit because they do not own the system. The federal residential solar credit (Section 25D) ended for expenditures made after December 31, 2025. Incentives, savings, rates, net-metering rules, and program availability vary by location and over time and are not guaranteed; verify current figures with the cited sources before you decide. See our full disclaimer.
