Your NV Energy bill went up after you got solar. Here is why.

Five things push a Las Vegas bill up after the panels go on, and your own statement tells you which one in about ten minutes. Summer air conditioning runs at night, when the panels have stopped. A move to the time of use plan made those evening hours expensive. The export credit is 75 percent and netting is monthly. The fixed charges never go away. Or the system stopped sending anything back.

Start with the export line. If it shows energy going back to the grid, your panels are working and the answer is one of the others.

The part solar was never going to touch

On Schedule RS, NV Energy's standard residential plan, the rate schedule effective October 1 2026 sets a basic service charge of $18.00 a month before you switch anything on. The same schedule adds a local government fee, which it says is currently 5 percent of the subtotal in Clark County, and a universal energy charge of $0.00039 per kWh.

Your solar credits cannot reach the basic service charge. NV Energy's NMR-405 page says credits cannot be applied to the basic service charge, additional meter charges or local government fees. Nevada law goes further: NRS 704.775 says the value of your excess electricity must not be used to reduce any other fee or charge the utility imposes.

Your contract had to warn you. NRS 598.9814 requires a purchase agreement to explain, on a separate page, that the purchaser will always receive a power bill while connected to the grid. So the question is never whether a bill arrives. It is whether this one is bigger than the arithmetic you were shown.

If your bill was already high before solar, that is a different page: why is my NV Energy bill so high.

Cause 1: summer air conditioning runs after sunset

This is the most common one, and it is not a fault.

Panels make most of their energy in the middle of the day. A Las Vegas house uses most of its energy on summer evenings, when the air conditioning keeps working long after the sun goes down behind the Spring Mountains. The midday surplus goes out to the grid; the evening demand comes back in from NV Energy.

Within a month that mostly nets out, as the next section explains. But a hot summer with more evening cooling than the estimate assumed means more delivered energy than your system can cover. The first summer bill after install is often the first time a homeowner sees this, and it gets blamed on the panels.

The same thing happens with anything new in the house since the estimate: a second air conditioner, an electric vehicle charging at home, a pool pump on a longer schedule, someone now working from home all day. NRS 598.9814 requires your contract to explain that estimates were built on your prior consumption and that a change in consumption can raise your bill. It reads like boilerplate, and for many houses it is the whole answer.

Compare the same month against the same month. NV Energy prints last year's figure on the statement. August against April tells you nothing.

Cause 2: the time of use plan

Some installers move customers onto NV Energy's optional time of use plan, ORS-TOU, at the same time as the solar goes on. On paper it can make sense. In a Las Vegas summer it can cost you.

On NV Energy's time of use plan, the schedule effective October 1 2026 sets the summer on-peak energy charge at $0.46912 per kWh, for 6:01 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. daily from June 1 to September 30, against $0.07062 off peak. Those are exactly the hours when your panels have faded and your air conditioning is working hardest. The standard plan, Schedule RS, charges a total effective $0.11514 per kWh at every hour.

There is a safety net worth checking. The same October schedule describes a Time-of-Use Guarantee: after the first year of service on a time of use rate, NV Energy compares what you paid for consumption with what you would have paid on the standard residential rate, credits the difference if you paid more, and asks whether you want to leave the time of use plan. If you are inside your first year, keep your statements. If you are past it, look for that credit and decide whether the plan suits your house.

Cause 3: the 75 percent credit, and when it applies

Every new rooftop system in Clark County lands on the fourth tier of NV Energy's net metering rider, NMR-405. Under NRS 704.7732, the fourth tier credit is 75 percent of the rate you would have paid for that kWh. On Schedule RS, the net metering schedule effective October 1 2026 sets that Tier 4 excess energy credit at $0.08347 per kWh.

When it applies is the part that gets mangled. NRS 704.775 makes the net metering billing period monthly. NV Energy's NMR-405 page describes it plainly: what you export is netted against what NV Energy delivered to you inside the monthly billing period, and only the surplus left over earns the credit. A kWh exported at noon and bought back at eight the same month settles one for one. Only the leftover is discounted.

So the 75 percent bites hardest in mild months, when a well sized system exports more than the house uses, and least in July. What 75 percent of retail actually costs you works the numbers side by side, and net metering in Nevada covers the tiers.

Cause 4: the system is smaller than the house needs

Check this early, because it stays wrong until someone adds panels.

Find the estimated production in the first year of operation on your agreement's cover page, which NRS 598.9813 requires. Total twelve months of what the system actually produced, and twelve months of what NV Energy delivered to you. If production is far below the estimate, that is a production problem, and solar producing less than promised walks through heat, dust, degradation and faults. If production matches the estimate but the house simply uses more than it did, the system was sized to your old life. How many solar panels a Las Vegas house needs works that back from a year of bills, and downloading your NV Energy usage gets you the data without asking anyone.

Cause 5: the system stopped sending anything back

The cheapest test in this article is on the statement itself. A net metering bill shows the energy NV Energy delivered and the energy your system sent back on separate lines. If the export line is zero in a clear month, nothing else matters until that is fixed. How to read your NV Energy bill with solar walks the lines one at a time, and is my solar system working covers the checks at the inverter.

One timing trap belongs here too. NV Energy's interconnection handbook says you receive no kWh credit for energy put back into the grid until its meter is set. A finished roof can sit for weeks earning nothing. And your app and the meter measure different things, which is untangled in your app says one number and NV Energy says another.

Two things that get blamed and are not the cause, yet

The daily demand charge. It has not started. It is scheduled for January 1 2027, under appeal at the Nevada Supreme Court; Vote Solar said on September 1 2026 that it has appealed. NV Energy's own page puts the charge at $0.14 per kW per day and says rooftop solar customers in southern Nevada "can expect to see a small increase in their bills" when it begins, while the energy rate falls. We follow it at the daily demand charge and the appeal.

A rate change. Rates do move. The October 1 2026 schedule is the one in this article, and what changes on October 1 2026 shows it next to the one before. A quarterly rate change moves a bill by cents per kWh. It does not explain a bill that doubled.

The ten minute check

1. Find the export line on your newest statement. Zero in a clear month means stop and get the equipment checked.
2. Compare this month with the same month last year, never with last month.
3. Find your rate plan on the bill. If it is time of use, note when you joined and whether the first year has passed.
4. Take the basic service charge and the local government fee out of the total. Those are there every month.
5. Total twelve months of production and compare with the first year estimate in your contract.
6. Write down which of the five causes your numbers point to, before you call anyone.

If it comes back to the equipment and the company that installed it no longer answers, start at your solar company went out of business. If it comes back to the contract, your rights in a Nevada solar contract covers what it had to say.

We are a licensed Nevada electrical contractor, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. Every figure above comes from the sources listed below, and we would rather you opened them.

We recheck this page quarterly. Last checked 2026-09-28. If a number here has moved, tell us and we will fix it the same week.