Vermonter's Guide to Residential Solar
Harnessing the Sun for Clean, Affordable, Local EnergyUnderstand and Explore Your Options!
Did you know more than 100 Montpelier homeowners and business owners have invested in solar? Your neighbors are investing in solar because it allows them to reduce their electric bills and generate their own clean electricity. A federal solar investment tax credit can save you 30 percent of the cost of a system, and Vermont’s net metering program offers additional incentives for systems that meet certain siting criteria, prioritizing roof-mounted arrays in particular.
Montpelier’s all-volunteer energy committee – the Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee (MEAC) – works to help Montpelier residents explore and implement forward-looking, money saving solutions that reduce the use of polluting fossil fuels, stabilize the costs of their energy and help achieve far greater energy independence. MEAC wants to help our neighbors explore solar as a potentially affordable and attractive resource to power your home or, paired with heat pump technology, heat and cool it as well.
Our mission is to help our neighbors identify and embrace ways to reduce their contribution to climate change and realize the cost-cutting, comfort, health and other benefits of efficiency and clean energy solutions. Our Net Zero Montpelier initiative is about transforming Montpelier’s energy system to ensure our community has a secure, affordable, sustainable and reliable energy future. It’s a bold, collaborative effort to invest in our collective future and become the first state capital to have all local energy needs — electric, thermal, and transportation — produced or offset by renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and conservation.
Solar will be a critical part of meeting Montpelier’s Net Zero goals. That’s why we want to share this recently released Vermonter's Guide to Residential Solar as a tool to help you explore solar as a piece of your path towards energy independence. The nonprofit Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) produced the report for the Vermont Public Service Department. We hope it will be a useful resource to you, and we hope we can be a useful resource to you.
We want to help you explore your best cost- and carbon-saving options! If you have questions or want guidance on the best solutions for you, please email the MEAC team at netzeromontpelier@gmail.com. We can help connect you with resources to reduce your energy use, invest in clean, renewable solutions and help our forward-looking community meet its energy goals.