'Use it or lose it': Solar advocates say IRS is still writing checks for solar credits, so go get yours

Even as solar advocates bemoan the Trump administration's U-turn in federal support for the fastest growing source of electricity generation in the U.S., they say there is still a short window for businesses, nonprofits and municipalities to squeeze benefits from expiring tax incentives.

Keystone Research Center, a Harrisburg-based think tank, and Lawyers for Good Government, a group of attorneys offering pro-bono help with tax incentive applications and project development, are urging Pennsylvania organizations to accelerate their solar plans in order to claim the 30% production tax credit expanded in the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and then eliminated by the One Big Beautiful Bill last year.

On Tuesday, the Keystone Research Center released a report titled, "Use it or lose it," which tracks the growth of solar in the state in recent years and catalogs incentives still available for future growth.

"In many ways, the worst impact of the (One Big Beautiful Bill Act) has been the misinformation and misperception of risk that it created," said Edward Yim, Lawyers for Good Government's director for clean energy, speaking at a webinar with the Keystone Research Center earlier this week.

"Tax credits are still available, and IRS is issuing checks. Sometimes they're delayed, but, if they're delayed, the good news is that you'll get a late interest payment on top of that tax credit."

So far, what has already expired are electric vehicle incentives and a tax credit for residential solar projects which offset up to 30% of the cost of installation. With a Dec. 31, 2025 sunset, rooftop solar contractors scrambled to finish work in time for their clients to qualify.

What remains available are 30% tax credits - or, in the case of municipalities and nonprofits, reimbursements - for commercial and utility-scale solar projects.

Those that begin construction by July 4 and go into service sometime in the following four years can still count on the tax credits, the report says.

Beginning of construction has different thresholds depending on project size. Smaller scale projects - those that are below 1.5 megawatts in capacity, which would include the majority of businesses installing solar on their roofs or properties to offset their own electricity use - must spend 5% of their total project cost to hold their eligibility.

Larger projects have to show physical work on the site is underway in order to qualify.

But if any project is operational by Dec. 31 2027, it will qualify even without the July 4 construction-start marker.

In the past five years, Pennsylvania has added the equivalent of the Beaver Valley nuclear power plant worth of solar. This is a measure of maximum capacity, not output. The 1.8 gigawatts of installed solar produce less power than 1.8 gigawatts of nuclear, which tends to run around the clock for more than 85% of the year.

Solar generates electricity only when the sun is out. Its advantage is that it is nuclear's opposite in two important ways: It is far cheaper and can be built in months or a few years vs. decades.

Still, it does take time to line up site and environmental permits, financing, and permission from grid operators to interconnect, which means larger projects that haven't started that work are likely to miss the deadline, report authors said.

But to estimate how much is at stake for projects already underway, the Keystone Research Center looked at how many have requested a connection to the regional transmission grid or their local utility grids and calculated that if half of them are completed, they would add more than 6 gigawatts to the grid and be eligible for more than $2 billion in tax credits. The numbers are rough estimates, the Keystone Research Center report admits.

"Whether the accurate tax credit amount is hundreds of millions or over a billion, it's a significant amount of money," it says. "Capturing more of that money would be a big win for the Pennsylvania economy and adding these additional electrons to the grid would somewhat ameliorate the potential for energy shortfalls and brownouts in the future."

To boost the chances of that happening, the think tank also included legislative recommendations, such as expanding the federal tax credits and pushing through state-level measures to increase how much clean energy utilities must buy, approving community solar, and other recommendations.

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This story was originally published April 22, 2026 at 11:16 PM.