Run the numbers honestly and solar still pencils out for most Rockville homes, but the reasoning has shifted. It’s no longer a federal tax credit doing the heavy lifting. Pepco’s pending case would push distribution charges up again, on a bill that’s already climbed roughly 20% since 2020 by state EIA data. A correctly sized system locks in today’s production against tomorrow’s higher rate, credit or no credit.
Then there’s the week Rockville lost power. On June 29, 2012, a derecho tore through Montgomery County, and Pepco crews needed more than eight days to fully restore service across the region during a record heat wave. That kind of outage is exactly what a battery-backed solar system is built to outlast, and Maryland’s 2025 Net Metering Flexibility Act now lets you bank summer overproduction indefinitely instead of losing it to an April reset.
There’s a climate angle too, separate from your bill. Maryland still leans on natural gas for over a third of its generation mix even as the state’s renewable mandate climbs toward 52.5% by 2030. A typical Rockville rooftop system takes a real bite out of that math, one household at a time, over the 25-plus years it stays on your roof.
