What "75% of retail" actually costs you

Tier 4 pays you 75 percent of the retail volumetric rate for the energy you export past what you used that month. On the rate schedule in force today, a kilowatt hour you use inside your own house is worth $0.11935 and a kilowatt hour you export is worth $0.08717. That gap is the single most important fact in sizing a Las Vegas solar system, and almost nobody states it.

Where the 75 percent comes from

Nevada wrote the number into statute in 2017. NRS 704.7732 sets a credit for each kilowatt hour of excess electricity, equal to a percentage of the rate you would have paid for that kilowatt hour, and it steps the percentage down in four tiers:

Each step happens when the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada determines and posts that another 80 megawatts of small net metering capacity has been taken up. There is no tier 5. Seventy five percent is the floor the Legislature wrote, and net metering in Nevada, in plain English explains the rest of the scheme.

NV Energy's interconnection handbook, revision 7 dated October 16 2025, confirms the practical position: NMR-405 Tier 4 is the default rate for a newly installed system of 25 kW or less. If you are quoting solar in Clark County this year, this is your rate.

The two numbers, side by side

The words "75 percent of retail" hide a definition. NV Energy's own NMR-405 page sets it out: the credit is 75 percent of the retail volumetric electricity rate, excluding public policy charges, and the retail volumetric rate is the electric consumption rate plus the deferred energy component.

On the residential schedule effective July 1 2026 that is $0.11622 plus $0.00000. So:

The kilowatt hour you keep is worth about 37 percent more than the one you send back.

There is a second, smaller effect on the same side. The Clark County local government fee is 5 percent of the subtotal of your bill, so a kilowatt hour you never buy also takes 5 percent of itself off that fee. Counting it, the one you use is worth closer to $0.12696 and the gap widens to about 44 percent. We have not applied the same adjustment to the export side, because NV Energy's published material does not say how the fee interacts with a credit, and we will not guess in your favour.

Monthly netting decides who the 75 percent actually hits

This is the part the internet gets wrong in both directions.

Southern Nevada nets monthly. NV Energy's net metering answers say that within a monthly billing period, exported energy is netted against delivered energy, and only if excess remains does the 75 percent credit apply and go into a carryover bank. NRS 704.775 says the same: the billing period for net metering must be a monthly period.

So inside a month, an exported kilowatt hour that you pull back later the same month is settled one for one at the consumption rate. The 75 percent does not touch it. The discount only bites on the surplus that is left after the whole month has been netted.

That changes who should care, and by how much:

• A system matched to its household exports at 75 percent only in the shoulder months, roughly March through May and October, when production runs ahead of load. The rest of the year it nets one for one and the tier hardly shows.
• An oversized array banks credit at 75 percent every mild month and spends it in July at full value. That still works, at three quarters of the rate.
• A house on a time of use schedule has a sharper problem, because carried forward excess goes back into the same time of use period it came from. Cheap off peak surplus cannot pay for an expensive evening. On NV Energy's time of use plan, summer on peak runs $0.47155 per kWh from 6:01 pm to 9 pm daily, June through September, against $0.07305 off peak, and no amount of midday banking crosses that line.

What it means for how a system should be sized here

Three consequences, in order of how much money they are worth.

Match the array to the load, not to the roof. You cannot chase export volume anyway. NV Energy's handbook states that a net metering system must be sized to meet no greater than 100 percent of a customer's annual electricity needs, and the application review checks that against your billing history. A bigger array here does not buy a bigger cheque. It buys more kilowatt hours valued at 75 percent. How many panels a Las Vegas house needs works that back from a year of bills.

Move load into the daylight. The pool pump, the dishwasher, the laundry and the car charger are all movable. Every one of them you shift from 9 pm to 1 pm converts a kilowatt hour from the $0.08717 column to the $0.11935 column. That is free money and it costs a timer.

Then consider a battery. A battery does the same conversion, at scale, every evening, without anybody remembering anything. In a state that credited exports one for one, a battery has to justify itself on backup alone. Here it has an arithmetic case too, and on a time of use schedule that case gets much stronger. We work it through in why a battery pays for itself between 6 and 9 pm, and whether it reaches the daily demand component in can a battery get you out of the demand charge.

What the credit cannot pay for

NV Energy's NMR-405 page: credits can be applied to future energy consumption charges, and cannot be applied to the basic service charge, additional meter charges or local government fees. NRS 704.775 states it more broadly still, that the value of the excess electricity must not be used to reduce any other fee or charge imposed by the utility.

So there is a floor under the bill, and no system gets under it. On Schedule RS the basic service charge alone is $18.00 a month. You can see exactly where all of this lands on a statement in how to read your NV Energy bill once you have solar.

That floor is also why people ask us about cutting the cord entirely. It is a fair question with an expensive answer, and we have written it up honestly at can you go off grid in Las Vegas.

The 20 years, and what is actually locked

NRS 704.773 requires the Commission and the utility to let you continue net metering at the location where the system was originally installed for 20 years, and it says in the same breath that continuing includes retaining your tier percentage. NV Energy's NMR-405 page repeats it: the Tier 4 credit rate will apply for 20 years.

Two things are locked and one is not. The percentage is locked. The right to net meter at that address is locked. The retail rate the percentage applies to is not, and it moves every time rates are reset. Anybody who quotes twenty years of savings by holding today's rate flat is doing arithmetic we would not sign, and is solar worth it in Las Vegas shows the version we would.

The tier travels with the property, not with you. If you sell, the next owner continues at that address. If you move, your credit bank does not come with you.

One thing changes in January 2027

NV Energy plans to break a daily demand component out of the energy rate for southern Nevada, priced at $0.14 per kW of your highest 15 minutes of use in a day. It is scheduled for January 1 2027, under appeal, after a Las Vegas judge denied the attorney general's petition against it in May 2026 and Attorney General Aaron Ford said he would take it to the Nevada Supreme Court. NV Energy's own page says rooftop solar customers in southern Nevada can expect a small increase in their bills when it begins. We keep that page current at the daily demand charge.

We recheck this page quarterly. Last checked 2026-09-19. If a number here has moved, tell us and we will fix it the same week.