Key takeaways
- Energy Trust of Oregon pays $3,500 per home in Portland General Electric territory and $2,500 per home in Pacific Power territory, and the job has to be installed by an approved Energy Trust solar trade ally.
- Solar Within Reach raises that to $1.25 per watt (up to $7,500) for income-qualified PGE customers and $0.85 per watt (up to $5,250) for Pacific Power customers.
- The federal Residential Clean Energy Credit is not available for property placed in service after December 31, 2025. Any residential proposal still showing a 30 percent homeowner credit is wrong.
- Oregon net metering caps residential systems at 25 kW and non-residential at 2 MW, with excess kWh credits carried for up to 12 months.
- Oregon plan sets are drawn to the 2023 Oregon Electrical Specialty Code (based on the 2023 NEC) and the 2025 Oregon Structural Specialty Code (based on the 2024 IBC), which became mandatory April 1, 2026.
Which solar incentives still pay in Oregon?
Three Oregon incentives still pay reliably: Energy Trust of Oregon cash incentives, the income-qualified Solar Within Reach program, and net metering. The Oregon Department of Energy Solar + Storage Rebate is closed to new reservations. The federal residential credit is gone for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, which changes the arithmetic on every residential proposal you write.
This is written for the person building the proposal and the submittal package, not for the homeowner reading a savings article. Every incentive below has a paperwork consequence: an approved-contractor requirement, a system size cap, a pre-approval step, or a document the utility wants attached to the interconnection application. Get those wrong and the money disappears after the array is on the roof.
We draft Oregon solar plan sets against these programs every week, so the sequencing below reflects what the utilities and the Building Codes Division actually ask for rather than what the marketing pages summarize.
What does Energy Trust of Oregon pay, and who is allowed to install it?
Energy Trust pays $3,500 per home for solar in PGE territory and $2,500 per home in Pacific Power territory, with a 2 kW-DC minimum. Battery storage adds $400 per kWh up to $5,000 for PGE customers and $288 per kWh up to $3,600 for Pacific Power customers, with a 3 kWh minimum. The customer has to be served by one of those two utilities and the work has to go through an approved Energy Trust solar trade ally.
Per Energy Trust of Oregon’s residential solar incentive page, the trade ally requirement is not a formality. If the installing contractor is not on the approved list, the incentive is not paid, no matter how good the system is. That single rule decides whether an Oregon residential job pencils, so it belongs in your qualification script before the site visit, not after.
Two more operational notes. First, Energy Trust states plainly that incentive offers are subject to funding availability and may change at any time, so a number quoted in a proposal written three months ago is a liability. Re-check before signature. Second, the incentives are utility-territory specific: PGE and Pacific Power only. A customer served by a public utility district, a municipal utility, or a co-op is outside the Energy Trust program entirely and needs a different conversation.
Salem Electric is the clearest example. Its members are not Energy Trust customers, but Salem Electric runs its own program: $300 per kW installed, capped at $1,500 per installation, for net-metered systems of 25 kW or less, and never more than 50 percent of project cost. Salem Electric also requires two bids from Oregon-approved contractors and reviews and approves the system before installation. That pre-approval step has to sit in your schedule ahead of the permit, not beside it.
How does Solar Within Reach change the numbers?
Solar Within Reach replaces the flat Energy Trust incentive with a per-watt payment for income-qualified households: $1.25 per watt up to $7,500 for PGE customers and $0.85 per watt up to $5,250 for Pacific Power customers. Battery incentives rise to $500 per kWh (up to $6,250) for PGE and $400 per kWh (up to $5,000) for Pacific Power.
The per-watt structure matters to design, not just to sales. Because the payment scales with array size up to the cap, a Solar Within Reach job rewards fitting the roof properly rather than shaving modules to hit a price point. On a 6 kW PGE system the incentive reaches the $7,500 ceiling, so anything above that size earns nothing extra from this program and has to justify itself on production and offset alone.
Eligibility is county-specific and refreshed annually. The Solar Within Reach income guidelines in force were published effective June 1, 2026, and the thresholds are wider than most installers assume: in Multnomah County a single-person household qualifies up to $134,850 and a family of four up to $192,450. Income counts gross wages, tips, rental income, public assistance, Social Security or pensions, self-employment income, alimony and interest. Screen for it. A meaningful share of the customers you are already quoting will qualify and nobody has told them.
Same trade ally rule, same two-utility footprint, same funding-availability caveat. Nothing about the income qualification loosens the contractor requirement.
Is the Oregon Solar + Storage Rebate still open?
No. The Oregon Department of Energy Solar + Storage Rebate Program is not currently accepting rebate reservation applications. It reopened on June 15, 2026 and received enough applications to exhaust the $1.1 million available, which closed it again.
This is the incentive most likely to be sitting stale in your proposal template. The Oregon Department of Energy program page is the authoritative status source, and ODOE offers an email list for reopening notices. The program runs in funded rounds rather than continuously, so the practical rule is simple: never write a rebate reservation into a contract you have not already reserved.
If you sold against this rebate in a prior round and the project has slipped, re-price it. A closed program does not grandfather a proposal.
What happened to the 30 percent federal solar tax credit?
The residential version is over. The IRS states that the Residential Clean Energy Credit equals 30 percent of qualified clean energy property costs installed from 2022 through December 31, 2025, and that the credit is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025. Homeowners buying a system today do not get it.
Confirm the current wording yourself on the IRS Residential Clean Energy Credit page before you quote it to anyone. This is the single most common stale claim in Oregon solar sales material, and it is the kind of error that turns into a rescinded contract rather than a correction.
The commercial side is different. Section 48E, the tech-neutral Clean Electricity Investment Credit, applies to qualified facilities and energy storage placed in service after December 31, 2024, with a 6 percent base credit that rises substantially where prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements are met, plus domestic content and energy community adders. That is the credit that now carries third-party-owned residential, commercial rooftop and community solar in Oregon.
There is a clock on it. IRS Notice 2025-42 describes the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as terminating the section 45Y and section 48E credits for applicable wind and solar facilities placed in service after December 31, 2027, with the amendments applying to facilities whose construction begins after July 4, 2026. Beginning-of-construction status is therefore a live design and procurement question on Oregon commercial work, not a tax footnote. Bring the tax advisor in early; do not let the drafting schedule be the thing that decides it.
For rural and agricultural customers there is still the USDA REAP grant for solar, which funds renewable energy systems for agricultural producers and rural small businesses. USDA is accepting guaranteed loan applications year-round but is not accepting REAP grant applications at this time, so check the state Rural Development energy coordinator before you build a proposal around it.
How does net metering work in Oregon?
Oregon has required net metering since 1999, and the Oregon Public Utility Commission states that all utilities participate: investor-owned, people’s utility districts, municipals and cooperatives. Residential systems are capped at 25 kW and commercial systems at 2 MW. If a customer exports more than they import, the kWh credit carries forward for up to 12 months.
Two consequences for design. First, the 25 kW residential cap is a hard ceiling on the nameplate you can put on a net-metered residential interconnection application, which occasionally bites on large rural homes with shop loads and EV charging. Second, credits left over after the 12-month carry-forward go to the utility’s low-income assistance programs rather than back to the customer, so oversizing past annual consumption is not a savings strategy and should not be sold as one.
The Oregon PUC renewable resources page is the reference for the statewide rules, but each utility runs its own interconnection process on top of them. Sizing the array to actual annual consumption, and documenting that sizing, is what keeps the interconnection application from bouncing. Where the load profile is doing real work in that argument, a production report from Aurora, Helioscope or PVsyst is the cleanest way to show it.
Which code cycle does an Oregon solar plan set have to meet?
Electrical work follows the 2023 Oregon Electrical Specialty Code, which is based on the 2023 National Electrical Code and took effect October 1, 2023. Structural work follows the 2025 Oregon Structural Specialty Code, based on the 2024 International Building Code, mandatory statewide since April 1, 2026. A 2026 OESC adoption is already in development.
Both dates come from the Oregon Building Codes Division. The BCD electrical code page carries the OESC edition and effective date and flags the next adoption cycle. Oregon is a statewide-code state, which is a genuine advantage over jurisdictions where adoption is fragmented, but it does not mean nothing moves. Plan sets drawn to a superseded structural edition are a straightforward rejection.
The three provisions that generate the most Oregon comments in our experience:
- NEC 2023 705.12(B)(3)(2) – the 120 percent busbar allowance for load-side connections. The sum of the utility overcurrent device rating and the inverter overcurrent device rating must not exceed 120 percent of the busbar ampacity. Do not confuse it with the 125 percent factor applied to continuous inverter output current when sizing conductors and overcurrent protection; they are different calculations.
- NEC 2023 690.12 – rapid shutdown. Name the controlled conductors, the initiation device and its location on the sheet, and label them.
- Structural attachment – the 2025 OSSC brings 2024 IBC load provisions with it. Snow load in the Cascades and along the eastern side of the state is not the same problem as a Willamette Valley roof, and the attachment schedule has to show it.
If you want the wider view of which articles govern which sheet, we broke it down in which NEC articles govern a solar plan set. For the DC side of the design, the worked examples in our solar string sizing guide use the temperature extremes that matter in a cold-morning Voc check.
What do Oregon incentives change about the documents you submit?
Incentives add a parallel paperwork track alongside the building permit: trade ally verification, utility pre-approval where required, an interconnection application sized to the net metering cap, and post-installation documentation. The plan set feeds all of them, which is why an inconsistency between the site plan, the single-line diagram and the interconnection application shows up as three separate delays rather than one.
The practical sequence on a typical Oregon residential job:
- Confirm the utility and the incentive path before the site visit. PGE or Pacific Power means Energy Trust; a co-op or municipal means its own program or none.
- Screen for Solar Within Reach eligibility at the same time. It changes the design target.
- Survey the site properly. Nearly every revision we see traces back to a measurement or a service panel detail that was assumed rather than recorded.
- Draw the plan set to the adopted OESC and OSSC editions, with the busbar calculation and rapid shutdown provisions shown on the sheet rather than implied.
- Submit the interconnection application and the permit package with matching numbers. Same array size, same inverter, same panel rating.
Avila Solar Drafting produces the documents; you submit them. Our residential solar plan sets are priced by system size and complexity, come back in 2-3 business days standard or 1-2 business days on Fast Roof with complete information, and include free revisions for six months. Where a project needs a stamp, our PE and SE engineering stamps are available separately.
Two checklists worth keeping open while you assemble the package: the solar permit pre-submittal checklist and the breakdown of why solar permits get rejected. Both are written from AHJ comments rather than from theory.
What else in Oregon affects the design?
Two things beyond the incentive programs: solar-ready provisions on new construction, and the local permitting variation that survives even under a statewide code. Oregon’s statewide code sets the technical baseline, but submittal formats, review queues and inspection practice still vary by jurisdiction.
New construction is the one most often missed by retrofit-focused installers. Solar-ready requirements affect where the conduit path, the roof zone and the panel capacity have to be reserved during the build, which is a much cheaper problem to solve on paper than on a finished house. We covered the mechanics in Oregon’s solar-ready program for new construction.
On the permitting side, the differences that cost you days are rarely technical. They are format: which sheets a jurisdiction wants, whether it accepts a combined electrical and structural set, how it handles deferred submittals, and what it expects on the placard schedule. We catalogued the ones that catch people out in solar permitting requirements that catch installers out.
Avila works with solar installers, EPCs and contractors. Homeowner-direct design work is available but carries a separate development and consultancy fee (every business is exempt — the fee applies only to homeowners running their own project).
Frequently asked questions
Which solar incentives are still available in Oregon?
Energy Trust of Oregon cash incentives, the income-qualified Solar Within Reach program and statewide net metering are all still active. Energy Trust pays 3,500 dollars per home in PGE territory and 2,500 dollars per home in Pacific Power territory, with battery adders on top. The Oregon Department of Energy Solar plus Storage Rebate is closed to new reservations after its June 2026 round exhausted the available funding. Some consumer-owned utilities, such as Salem Electric, run their own separate rebates.
Do Oregon homeowners still get the 30 percent federal solar tax credit?
No. The IRS states that the Residential Clean Energy Credit applied to qualified property installed from 2022 through December 31, 2025, and that the credit is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025. Commercial, community and third-party-owned projects may still qualify under the section 48E Clean Electricity Investment Credit, which has its own base rate, bonus adders and beginning-of-construction timing rules. Confirm current status with a tax advisor before quoting any figure.
Do you have to be an Energy Trust trade ally to get the Oregon solar incentive?
Yes. Energy Trust of Oregon requires that the customer be served by Portland General Electric or Pacific Power and that the work be performed by an approved Energy Trust solar trade ally contractor. If the installing contractor is not on the approved list, the incentive is not paid. Confirm trade ally status before the site visit, because it decides whether the job pencils at the price you are about to quote.
How large can a net-metered solar system be in Oregon?
The Oregon Public Utility Commission caps net-metered residential systems at 25 kW and non-residential systems at 2 MW. All Oregon utilities participate, including investor-owned utilities, people’s utility districts, municipals and cooperatives. Excess kWh credits carry forward for up to 12 months, after which any remaining credit goes to the utility’s low-income assistance programs rather than back to the customer, so oversizing beyond annual consumption returns nothing.
Which code edition does an Oregon solar plan set follow?
Electrical work follows the 2023 Oregon Electrical Specialty Code, based on the 2023 National Electrical Code, effective October 1, 2023, with a 2026 OESC adoption in development. Structural work follows the 2025 Oregon Structural Specialty Code, based on the 2024 International Building Code, mandatory since April 1, 2026. Adoption is not uniform across the country, and jurisdictions are spread across several NEC editions, so confirm the adopted cycle with the AHJ before drawing.
How long does an Oregon solar plan set take?
Standard plan sets are returned in 2-3 business days with complete information, and Fast Roof plan sets in 1-2 business days. Plan set pricing depends on system size and complexity, and every set includes free revisions for six months. Avila produces the drawings and the calculations; the installer submits them to the AHJ and the utility. Every set is designed to pass first-time review.
Get an Oregon plan set drawn to the adopted code
Incentive rules change on their own schedule. The plan set is the part you control. Send us the survey and the equipment list and you get a set drawn to the 2023 OESC and the 2025 OSSC, with the busbar calculation, the rapid shutdown provisions and the attachment schedule shown on the sheet.
Order a plan set, or call 971-410-0655 to talk through an Oregon project first.
