New York pays about 23.4¢ per kilowatt-hour for residential electricity and receives about 4.2 kWh per square metre per day of sunlight — 9th and 41st respectively among the 50 states and DC tracked here. Those two numbers set the ceiling on what rooftop solar returns in New York, and they point in opposite directions.
Where New York sits against the rest of the country
New York is 8.6¢/kWh above the median residential rate across this dataset (14.8¢/kWh) and 0.4 kWh/m²/day below the median insolation (4.6 kWh/m²/day). Under this site's standard assumptions, that combination puts New York 9th of 51 for modeled payback speed, at 10.2 years against a dataset median of 13.5 years.
What actually drives payback in New York
New York is rate-led: upper half of the dataset for electricity price (9th), lower half for sunlight (41st). Swap New York's sunlight for the dataset median and payback moves to 9.4 years (0.8 years of swing). Swap its electricity rate instead and payback moves to 15.1 years (4.9 years of swing). The rate swap is the larger of the two, so what a kilowatt-hour costs is the input deciding the outcome in New York.
State incentives on record
Recorded for New York: NY-Sun Megawatt Block incentive ($/W declining); 25% state tax credit up to $5,000; sales tax exemption; property tax exemption (opt-in by municipality); Value of Distributed Energy Resources (VDER) compensation.
No federal credit is applied above (Section 25D expired 31 December 2025), and export terms often matter more than the headline rate (net metering guide).
The modeled system, in numbers
At New York's sunlight level a 7 kW array produces roughly 8,370 kWh a year, worth about $1,959 in first-year bill savings at 23.4¢/kWh against an assumed $22,400 installed cost. A ten-year payback at this sunlight level would require a residential rate of about 24.0¢/kWh, which is 0.6¢ above what New York households pay today.
States with comparable economics
New York's closest analogues by modeled payback are New Hampshire (10.1 years), Nevada (10.0 years), Arizona (10.4 years). They arrive there from different rate and sunlight combinations, so their incentive rows are the useful comparison.
- New Hampshire — modeled payback 10.1 years
- Nevada — modeled payback 10.0 years
- Arizona — modeled payback 10.4 years
New York-specific notes
New York layers the NY-Sun Megawatt Block incentive, a 25% state tax credit capped at $5,000, and VDER compensation for exported energy on top of an above-median rate. The modeled payback above applies none of those — it values production at the retail rate only — so a New York buyer who captures the state credit should expect to beat it.