Cook County, IL has a few incentives you can take advantage of. First, solar panels are eligible for a property tax exclusion, which means, if you pay $7,000 per year in property taxes, installing a solar panel system won’t cause that amount to increase, and you will continue to pay $7,000.

Another incentive is the Illinois Solar Energy Association’s Renewable Energy Credit Aggregation Program, which is a program designed to buy renewable energy credits from solar panel owners, bundle them into a larger package of credits and then sell them to Community Energy.

Finally, the federal government will cover up to 30 percent of a solar energy system’s costs through a Residential Renewable Energy Tax Credit. This credit is set to last through 2010.