Westchester County Solar Incentives 2026: Own vs. Lease, Side by Side

Every Westchester County solar incentive in 2026 is real money — but which ones you actually collect depends on how you go solar. Here’s the honest breakdown.

If you’ve started looking into Westchester County solar incentives for 2026, you’ve probably noticed something frustrating: every list online lumps the programs together as if everyone gets everything. They don’t. Whether you own your system or lease it changes which incentives land in your pocket — and nobody selling you a contract is eager to walk through that distinction.

So let’s do exactly that. Below is each incentive available to Westchester homeowners this year, what it’s worth, and who actually receives it under the two main paths: owning your system (cash or a $0-down loan) versus leasing it (a lease or power purchase agreement).

Westchester County solar incentives 2026: the full stack

NY-Sun (NYSERDA) Megawatt Block rebate. A per-watt rebate paid on new residential systems. You never file for this one — your installer applies it automatically and it comes off the project price. Because it reduces the system cost, it benefits you under either path: owners pay less, and lessees see it baked into a lower monthly rate.

NY State solar tax credit. This is the big one for owners: 25% of your system cost, up to $5,000, as a direct credit against your New York State income taxes — a credit, not a deduction, so it reduces what you owe dollar for dollar.

15-year property tax exemption. Solar reliably raises what a home is worth, and normally a value-adding improvement means a higher assessment. New York exempts the solar value from your property assessment for 15 years, so your taxes don’t go up because you added panels.

Net metering at full retail rate. In Con Edison territory, every excess kilowatt-hour your panels send to the grid is credited at the full retail rate — about 38¢/kWh, versus a national average of roughly 14¢. Sunny-month credits carry over to cover overcast stretches, which is how a properly sized system reaches 100% annual offset. Both owners and lessees benefit, since the credits offset the household’s bill either way.

What about the federal credit and the NYC abatement? Briefly: the 30% federal tax credit applies only if you purchase your system with cash or a loan — standard lease and PPA customers don’t receive it. And the NYC Property Tax Abatement, generous as it is, is for the five boroughs only; it doesn’t apply to Westchester addresses.

Own vs. lease: who gets what

Read the table honestly and you’ll see there’s no villain here — just a trade. Ownership captures the two biggest line items, the state and federal tax credits, and every kilowatt-hour of long-term value. Leasing trades those credits away in exchange for zero maintenance responsibility and the simplest possible arrangement: the panels go up, your monthly cost goes down, and someone else worries about the hardware.

What it means for your monthly bill

Here’s the context that makes any of these incentives matter. Westchester households pay Con Edison an average of 38¢/kWh — nearly triple the national average — and Con Ed has raised rates roughly 8% per year. At that pace, a $300 monthly bill becomes about $444 within five years. Two-thirds of that bill is the delivery charge, which runs about twice the supply charge, and no amount of thermostat discipline touches it.

Solar changes the arithmetic under either path. A typical Westchester home paying $300 a month lands around $150–$180 after going solar — a 40–50% reduction — with roughly a $20 monthly basic service fee remaining for the grid connection. With $0-down financing, the loan payment usually comes in below the Con Ed bill it replaces, so the savings start in month one rather than after a payback period.

Which path fits which homeowner?

Ownership tends to win for homeowners with a state and federal tax bill large enough to use the credits, and for anyone planning to stay in the home long enough to enjoy the years of near-free production after the loan is paid. It also keeps things cleaner in a home sale — an owned system simply transfers with the house.

Leasing tends to fit homeowners who can’t use the tax credits — retirees with modest tax liability, for instance — or who value predictability over maximum savings. The monthly savings are smaller than ownership delivers over 25 years, but they’re immediate, and the maintenance question never lands on you.

Either way, the incentives above are the difference between solar being a nice idea and being the cheaper option. The honest move is to run both scenarios against your actual Con Edison bill and your actual tax situation — which is precisely what a good installer should offer to do before asking you to sign anything.