Xcel Is Paying Up to $3 Per Watt for Solar. Here's Who Qualifies in Colorado.

Most conversations about paying for solar in Colorado start with the same question: what does it cost? For a meaningful share of Xcel Energy customers, the honest answer right now is nothing, or close to it — and almost nobody knows it.

Xcel's income-qualified Solar*Rewards rebate pays up to $3.00 per watt of installed solar, on systems up to 10 kW AC. At that rate the rebate is large enough to cover the full installed cost of a typical residential system. Not a discount. Not a loan. The system, paid for.

This is a real program with a real budget, and that budget has run dry early in each of the last several years. Here's exactly how it works, who qualifies, and what you need to do to claim it.

What the income-qualified rebate actually is

Solar*Rewards is Xcel Energy's long-running rooftop solar program in Colorado. Most customers know the standard version: a modest upfront rebate plus a small per-kWh payment for the renewable energy credits your system produces.

What far fewer people know is that the program has a separate, dramatically larger tier for income-qualified households and for homes in Disproportionately Impacted Communities. That tier exists because Colorado's Senate Bill 21-272 directed utilities to make clean energy accessible to the households that have historically been left out of it — the ones who stand to benefit most from a lower power bill and are least able to write a check for a solar system.

In April 2026, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission approved a settlement between Xcel, GRID Alternatives, Vote Solar and other stakeholders as part of Xcel's 2026–2027 Renewable Energy Plan. That decision pushed the income-qualified residential rebate up to $3.00 per watt and increased the enhanced battery incentive alongside it. It is, by a wide margin, the strongest residential solar incentive available in Colorado today.

What $3 per watt looks like on a real roof

Solar pricing is quoted per watt, so the math here is unusually direct. A rebate of $3.00 per watt on a 6 kW system is $18,000. Here's how it scales across common system sizes:

For context, a well-priced residential solar installation in Colorado generally lands comfortably below $3.00 per watt. That is the entire point of how the incentive was designed: at this rebate level, an income-qualified household should be able to go solar for little or nothing out of pocket, rather than being handed a smaller discount on a bill they still can't pay.

The 10 kW AC cap is the ceiling on what the rebate covers, not a limit on what you can install. If your home genuinely needs a larger array — an EV, electric heat, a big square footage — you can build bigger and simply pay the difference on the portion above the cap.

The Disproportionately Impacted Community rebate

There's a second path that has nothing to do with your income: the Disproportionately Impacted (DI) Community rebate, worth $0.50 per watt. Eligibility here is determined by where you live, not what you earn.

Colorado maps these areas through the state's EnviroScreen tool — a public map you can search by address — which scores census block groups on environmental and health burden factors — air quality, proximity to industrial sites, socioeconomic indicators. If your service address falls inside a designated DI Community, or in a block group scoring in the top 20% statewide, you qualify.

This surprises people. DI designations cover large, populated portions of the Front Range — parts of Denver, Commerce City, Adams County, Pueblo, and plenty of neighborhoods homeowners would never assume were on the list. It costs nothing to have your address checked, and it's the first thing we look up on any project.

How you qualify on income

Xcel accepts several routes to income qualification, and you only need to meet one of them:

• Household income at or below 200% of the federal poverty guideline. For a family of four this is a considerably higher threshold than most people assume.
• Household income at or below 80% of Area Median Income (AMI) for your county. In the Denver metro, 80% AMI is a number that surprises a lot of working households.
• Existing qualification for LEAP, Colorado's Low-income Energy Assistance Program, under the Department of Human Services income guidelines.

That second criterion is the one worth reading twice. Area Median Income scales with local housing costs, and along the Front Range it captures a lot of teachers, tradespeople, retirees on fixed incomes, and single-earner families who would never describe themselves as low income.

The verification step

Income qualification has to be verified by a third-party organization — Xcel doesn't take your word for it, and neither does your installer. A signed verification form must come from one of the following:

• Energy Outreach Colorado (EOC)
• The Colorado LEAP program
• The Colorado Energy Office (CEO)
• A municipal housing authority — for example, the Denver Housing Authority
• GRID Alternatives Colorado

If you're already enrolled in LEAP, you're most of the way there. If you're not, this is a paperwork step, not an obstacle — and it's one we walk homeowners through rather than handing them a form and wishing them luck.

Add a battery: Renewable Battery Connect

Solar and storage are separate programs at Xcel, and they stack. The battery side is called Renewable Battery Connect, and it works on the same income-qualified and DI tiers:

One detail to get right: the battery rebate is paid on the battery's kW AC rating — its continuous power output — not on its kWh storage capacity. A battery rated for 5 kW AC earns an income-qualified rebate of $5,000, whether it holds 10 kWh or 20 kWh. It's a distinction worth understanding when you're comparing equipment, because the battery with the bigger headline number isn't always the one that earns the bigger rebate.

What that means for the batteries we actually install

Two of the most common batteries on Colorado roofs are the Tesla Powerwall 3 and the Enphase IQ Battery 10C. Here's how the rebate lands on each:

The Powerwall 3 row shows the 75% rule in action. Its 11.5 kW rating is high enough that the equipment cap kicks in before the per-kW math runs its course, so $8,625 is the most this rebate pays on a Powerwall 3. The 10C's $7,080 sits below its own cap and pays out in full.

Which is the practical takeaway on equipment: the Powerwall 3's higher power rating still earns roughly $1,545 more for an income-qualified household, but not the full spread its 11.5 kW rating suggests, because the cap absorbs part of it. Capacity works the same way — the Powerwall holds 13.5 kWh against the 10C's 10 kWh, and none of that extra storage affects the rebate at all. Rebate math is one input among several here, not the deciding one. We break down the rest of the trade-offs in our Powerwall 3 vs. Enphase comparison and on our battery backup page.

Two more things worth knowing. The standard tier is capped at $5,000 per application, separate from the 75% rule. And not every battery on the market is approved for the program — the Franklin aPower 2, for instance, isn't currently eligible, which is worth checking before you fall in love with a spec sheet.

On top of the upfront rebate, participating homes receive roughly $100 per year for five years as a bill credit for staying enrolled.

In exchange, you agree to let Xcel draw on your battery during peak demand periods — up to 60% of your stored energy, up to 60 times per year. Your battery is not emptied, and your backup function isn't handed over. A reserve is held back, and in practice most participants don't notice the events happening. We cover the mechanics in detail in our guide to Renewable Battery Connect.

The reason to pair them is straightforward. Colorado has had a rough few years of Public Safety Power Shutoffs and weather-driven outages, and solar alone doesn't keep your lights on when the grid goes down — it shuts off too. A battery is what turns a solar array into a home that stays powered. Getting most of that battery paid for is not an opportunity that shows up often.

The part that matters most: funding runs out

Both programs run on a fixed annual budget that is allocated first-come, first-served. This is not a scare tactic — it's the observable pattern:

• The 2025 solar allocation reached capacity within the first week of January
• Renewable Battery Connect exhausted its budget and stopped accepting applications in February 2026
• It reopened with renewed funding in May 2026

Applications are processed in the order they're received, and the money is committed when the application is approved — not when your panels are installed. Homeowners who wait for a convenient moment to start the conversation frequently find the window closed, and the next one is a full program year away.

How to apply

One detail trips people up more than any other: you don't apply yourself. Xcel requires your solar installer to submit the application on your behalf, through the utility's contractor portal, before any equipment is installed. Install first and the rebate cannot be applied retroactively.

• Confirm eligibility. We check your address against the DI Community map and walk through the income criteria with you. Takes minutes.
• Get the verification form signed by LEAP, EOC, the Colorado Energy Office, a municipal housing authority, or GRID Alternatives — if you're going the income-qualified route.
• We design the system and size it against the 10 kW AC rebate cap and your actual usage.
• We submit the application to Xcel with the verification attached, and secure your place in the funding queue.
• Installation happens after approval, followed by inspection and permission to operate.

You can read the official program terms directly from Xcel Energy on the Solar*Rewards and Renewable Battery Connect pages. Rebate levels and funding availability are set by the Colorado PUC and can change between program years, so confirm current figures before you plan around them.

A note on the rest of the incentive picture

Homeowners often ask how this interacts with the federal tax credit. As of 2026, the 30% residential clean energy credit is no longer available to homeowners who buy a system directly — which is exactly why programs like this one matter more than they used to. For households that don't qualify on income or address, there are still strong paths to capturing federal incentive value indirectly; our guide to prepaid solar leases covers how that works.

Colorado's state-level sales and property tax exemptions on solar equipment still apply on top of everything above, and you'll still receive net metering credits from Xcel for the power you send back to the grid. You can see how those pieces fit together in our Colorado solar incentives reference.

Frequently asked questions

Steven Weaver

Steven is the founder of Solar Wave and has dedicated the last seven years of his career to the solar industry. After consulting for multiple solar companies across the US he founded Solar Wave in Denver, Colorado. Solar Wave is on a mission to continue the rapid deployment of residential and commercial solar in Colorado by offering the best solar equipment and installation services at the lowest prices possible.