Colorado · Arvada
Arvada solar: the cheapest, fastest permit desk on the Front Range we have reviewed
Written by the Solar Learning Lab research deskUpdated August 30, 202612 min read
The first documented gold strike in the Rocky Mountain region happened at Ralston Creek in present day Arvada on June 22, 1850, per the city's history. The modern find is less romantic but easier to verify: a residential solar permit here costs a flat $50 plus a $36 plan review fee, and the city promises a completed technical review within seven days of a complete application, per Arvada's solar permit page. Neighboring valuation based fee schedules cannot touch that.
Cheap paper does not mean casual engineering. Arvada publishes two different wind design speeds depending on which side of Highway 93 your roof sits, requires a stamped engineer's report on every roof mount, and just adopted the 2024 International Codes. This page covers the permit, the wind line, and how the Xcel Energy side of the deal actually pays.
Start with the seven day math
When the permit takes a week and costs $86 in fees, the schedule bottleneck is your installer's queue, not city hall. Screen your production numbers first.
Estimate Arvada solarThe seven day clock is real, and it is published
Most cities describe permit timelines in vibes. Arvada writes one down: a technical plan review completed within seven days of a complete application, with an email when the permit is approved and ready for payment by Visa, MasterCard, or Discover, per the city's solar page. The qualifier doing the work in that sentence is complete. An application missing the three line diagram or the engineer's report does not start the clock, it starts a correction cycle.
The fee stack is equally legible. Fifty dollars flat for residential solar, $36 for plan review, plus use tax on materials under City Code Section 98-84, collected at permit and then shown to vendors so local sales tax comes off at the register, per the building fee schedule. One trap: the valuation you enter must be the full project value before any rebates. Understating it to shave use tax is the kind of shortcut that surfaces at final inspection.
The Highway 93 wind line splits the city's engineering
Arvada is the only city in our Colorado coverage that publishes a two zone wind requirement. East of Highway 93, structures design to 136 mph Vult. West of it, closer to the foothills, the number jumps to 150 mph Vult, both at Exposure C, with a 30 psf roof snow load on top, per the published design loads. If your address sits in far west Arvada, your engineer's report needs the higher wind speed, and a report recycled from a Denver job will not pass review.
The structural rules carry the same seriousness. Roof mounted arrays go on permanent standoffs fastened to structural members and properly flashed, the engineer's report must cover the existing roof's dead load capability along with the required wind speed and snow load, and panels projecting above the ridge line need their own engineering treatment. None of this is bureaucratic theater. It is what 100 mph plus foothill gusts do to design documents.
Filing through eTRAKiT, start to finish
Applications go through the Arvada Permits Site at arvadapermits.org, built on eTRAKiT, with licensed contractors logging in under their license number and every attachment in PDF, per the solar page. The submittal list: a plot plan with equipment locations, a three line wiring diagram, product literature, a note on whether the system is stand alone or interactive, and a subcontractor approval form when the electrician is not attached to the general contractor. Paper drop off still works at 8101 Ralston Road, weekdays 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Inspections are lighter than the engineering. Existing homes need only a final building and a final electrical; rough inspections apply to new construction. Slots can be scheduled until 6 a.m. of the desired day through the portal or the automated line at 720-898-7630, with inspectors running Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Note the code baseline too: Arvada has adopted the 2024 International Codes with amendments, and its updated building fee schedule took effect January 1, 2026, per the building permits page. Plan sets drawn to older cycles for other Front Range cities need a refresh before they land here.
Two ways Xcel prices your power
Electric service in Arvada comes from Xcel Energy, Public Service Company of Colorado, the utility the city itself partnered with to build its 2022 Energy Action Plan, per the city's plan page. Across its Colorado residential base, Xcel averaged 15.046 cents per kWh in 2024, per EIA Table 6. What a solar kWh is worth to you depends on which residential schedule you sit on.
| Energy source | Type | Average price | What that means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xcel Energy | Schedule R energy charge, summer | 10.380¢ per kWh | Winter drops to 8.570¢. Service and Facility charge $7.10 monthly, plus applicable rate adjustments. |
| Xcel Energy | Schedule RE-TOU, summer on peak | 20.915¢ per kWh | Summer shoulder 14.332¢, off peak 7.749¢. Adds a $2.55 load meter charge. |
| Xcel Energy | Schedule RE-TOU, winter on peak | 13.171¢ per kWh | Winter shoulder 10.460¢, off peak 7.749¢. Production meter adds $2.55 where applicable. |
| Solar exports | Net metering credit under C.R.S. 40-2-124 | Retail dollar credit | Excess rolls into a Rollover Bank at the prevailing total energy rate. The optional annual cash out pays only the average hourly incremental cost. |
Rates from Xcel's Colorado residential rates brochure, reviewed August 30, 2026.
The spread between 20.915 cent summer peaks and 7.749 cent off peak hours on RE-TOU is the quiet argument for pairing panels with load shifting. On flat Schedule R the analysis is simpler: every offset kWh in summer is worth about a dime before riders.
What happens to the kWh you do not use
Colorado law does the heavy lifting here. C.R.S. 40-2-124 obligates Xcel to net meter, lets monthly excess carry forward as a credit indefinitely, forbids moving a solar customer to a different rate class, and bars the utility from capping your system size based solely on past consumption. The customer may instead elect, in writing, an annual cash out at the utility's average hourly incremental cost. Read that phrase twice. Average hourly incremental cost is a wholesale flavored number, not retail. Export income is not where Arvada solar pays; retail offset is.
Xcel's implementation gives the credit two doors, per the Solar Rewards FAQ and the new customer FAQ. Excess becomes a dollar credit at the prevailing total energy rate, offsets everything except the Service and Facilities charge, and pools in a Rollover Bank. Door one, Continuous Rollover: the balance never expires, can never be cashed out, and evaporates if you move. Door two, the default Waive Decision: a year end check at that incremental cost figure. You can switch from Waive to Continuous Rollover exactly once, by December 1. Households that expect to stay put and run modest surpluses tend to fare fine either way; the households that get burned are the ones that oversized expecting export checks at retail.
REC checks and the 120 percent fence
Solar Rewards adds a second, smaller income stream: Xcel buys your renewable energy credits and mails the system owner a monthly check based on metered production, at whatever rate the REC Purchase Contract sets. The worked example in Xcel's own FAQ uses half a cent per kWh, where 4,000 kWh pays $20, and small customer owned contracts run 20 years with 10 years of REC payments. The city's Energy Action Plan page puts the possible production payment range at $0.005 to $0.0375 per kWh. Real money, worth collecting, and nowhere near the headline of the deal.
The program also polices ambition. Annual PV output may not exceed 120 percent of your total usage from the previous 12 months, and applications over the line get declined and sent back for downsizing, per the same FAQ. Between that fence and the weak cash out rate, the design brief writes itself: size to your load, spend the leftover budget on load flexibility, and treat REC checks as a rounding term.
Battery money, the current version
Two battery facts circulate in Arvada sales pitches and only one survives contact with the statute. Colorado's 10 percent residential storage tax credit under C.R.S. 39-22-546 applied only to tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2023 and before January 1, 2025. A battery bought in 2026 gets nothing from it. What still pays is program money: $1,250 for enrolling a battery in an Xcel resiliency program, per the city's Energy Action Plan page. If a quote lists the state credit as a line item, the rest of that quote deserves a second read.
The exemption ledger, after the federal credit's exit
The federal Section 25D homeowner credit is gone for installations completed after December 31, 2025, per the Congressional Research Service, and Colorado never had a state income credit for solar. What Colorado keeps is friction removal. C.R.S. 39-26-724 strips sales and use tax from components that produce AC power from renewables, naming modules, racks, inverters, wiring and control systems, while excluding labor, storage devices and remote monitoring. On the property side, the Division of Property Taxation treats residential renewable equipment as exempt when it is on the residential property, owned by the owner, and producing energy that property uses, with independently owned residential systems up to 100 kW AC exempt as well. Neither shows up as a discount on a quote. Both quietly lower what you actually pay.
The city's own advice ordering is worth repeating because it is unusually honest for a government page: efficiency first, heat pumps at equipment replacement time, then solar, and do not put panels on a roof that needs replacing soon, per the Energy Action Plan. We would add only that Arvada's permit pricing makes the solar step cheaper to start than almost anywhere nearby.
Yield at 5,525 feet
Our downtown Arvada run models 1,544.1 kWh per year per installed kW. June peaks at 148.8 kWh per kW, and the striking part is the plateau: March through July all clear 140, because thin air and Front Range spring sun show up earlier than most homeowners expect. December is the floor at 97.0.
June models 148.8 kWh per kW, but March at 144.3 nearly matches it. Altitude gives Arvada a long, flat production season rather than a single summer spike.
PVGIS v5.2 model run by Solar Learning Lab on August 30, 2026, NSRDB radiation database. Fixed south facing mount, 30 degree tilt, 14 percent losses, downtown Arvada coordinates. Your roof will differ. Tool documentation at PVGIS. The 30 psf snow load in the city's design requirements is a reminder that a spring storm can blank a week; judge the shoulder months as a season.
The Arvada bench
Installer depth here draws from the whole northwest metro, Broomfield and Westminster shops included, with several firms carrying hundreds of reviews. The sorting question for this specific city: which wind zone is my house in, and what Vult number goes in the engineer's report? A bidder who answers with 136 or 150 and a reason has read Arvada's requirements. One who shrugs is planning to find out during plan review, on your seven days.
Ratings snapshot: Google Maps, August 2026, via the DataForSEO SERP feed. Zero companies paid us and none are endorsed by us.
Screen the numbers before anyone climbs a ladder
The estimate below pairs the 2024 Xcel Colorado average rate with our Arvada production run. It does not model RE-TOU peak pricing or Rollover Bank choices, so treat it as a sizing sanity check and make any bidder show the schedule specific math on paper.
The top of the slider is our Arvada PVGIS run, 1,544.1 kWh per kW per year at 5,525 feet. The bottom trims 15 percent for shade and orientation. March through July all model above 140 kWh per kW here.
Cash quotes in Arvada cluster near $2.66 per watt, against a $3.50 national 2024 median (LBNL). Use your quote.
Assumptions you can change
Use the rate on your actual lease or PPA quote. There is no published statewide average we trust enough to hardcode.
Cash purchase
$13,832 after state credit
- Year 1 benefit
- $101/mo
- Payback
- 11 years
- 20 year net position
- $15,485
No Colorado income tax credit exists for solar and the federal homeowner credit ended December 31, 2025. The working levers in Arvada: retail rate netting under C.R.S. 40-2-124, Solar Rewards REC checks, the sales and property tax exemptions, and an unusually cheap $50 permit.
Solar loan
$180/mo 15 yr payment
- Year 1 net
- -$80/mo
- Upfront
- $0
- 20 year net position
- -$3,157
Arvada has no city loan program on any page we reviewed, so compare bank and dealer offers on rate and fees alone. Remember the permit valuation must be entered at full value before rebates, which affects use tax, not your loan.
Lease / PPA
$0 down you buy the power
- Year 1 net
- -$60/mo
- Upfront
- $0
- 20 year net position
- -$15,199
The federal homeowner credit is gone for installations completed after December 31, 2025. Evaluate an Arvada lease on its escalator and on who keeps the Solar Rewards REC payments, because those checks go to the system owner, not automatically to you.
Estimates, not quotes. This tool uses the 2024 Xcel Colorado average rate from EIA Table 6, our downtown Arvada PVGIS run and EnergySage Colorado cost inputs. It cannot model RE-TOU time of use pricing, Rollover Bank elections or REC payments. We are a solar installer and we also partner with other solar companies. See our disclosures.
We are a solar installer and we also partner with other solar companies.
Asked in Arvada
How much does an Arvada solar permit really cost?
How long does plan review take?
What is the Highway 93 wind rule?
Does Xcel pay me for extra production?
Can I oversize my system for future loads?
Is there still a Colorado battery tax credit?
The file cabinet
Documents behind every figure on this page, reviewed August 30, 2026.
- Arvada solar permit page with design loads, building fee schedule and building permits and adopted codes
- Arvada Energy Action Plan
- Xcel Colorado residential rates brochure, Solar Rewards FAQ and Solar Rewards new customer FAQ
- C.R.S. 40-2-124, C.R.S. 39-26-724, C.R.S. 39-22-546 and Division of Property Taxation guidance
- CRS IN12611 plus EIA Table 6, the Arvada city profile and the PVGIS tool
Get an Arvada design with the right wind zone on page one
Tell us which side of Highway 93 you live on and whether you are on Schedule R or RE-TOU. Those two answers set the engineering and the economics.
What does your monthly electric bill look like?
Arvada average is $101 per month (EIA, 2024).