Going Off-Grid in Mohave County: Solar vs Power Line Costs

Quick Answer
Off-grid means you generate and store your own electricity instead of buying it. In Mohave County the decision turns on distance. UniSource builds the first 550 feet of a residential line extension at its own cost; Mohave Electric builds 625 feet where the property is not within a subdivision. Past that allowance you fund the line yourself, which is where off-grid solar starts to compete.

The distance from a parcel to the nearest pole is not something anyone can price from a listing photo. Some of the numbers are published, though, and the rest only come out of a quote, so it helps to know which is which before you start making calls.

Key Takeaways
– UniSource builds the first 550 feet of a single-phase residential line extension at its own expense. Past that you advance a refundable deposit (UNS Electric Sheet 907, 2024).
– Mohave Electric’s allowance is 625 feet, overhead or underground, as long as the property is not inside a subdivision (Mohave Electric Service Rules).
– Neither utility publishes a per-foot price you can budget from. The UNS tariff’s worked example uses $15.00 per foot and then says the dollars are illustrative.
– The 30% federal solar credit is gone for installations completed after December 31, 2025 (IRS FS-2025-05). Arizona’s 25% credit, capped at $1,000, still stands.
– A Kingman-area parcel yields about 1,912 kWh per kW of solar per year (Global Solar Atlas, April 2026).

What does going off-grid mean in Mohave County?

Off-grid means no utility meter. You produce your own power, store it, and manage the gap between what you make and what you use. In 2026 that is almost always a solar array, a battery bank, an inverter and a charge controller, with propane or a generator covering the days the array cannot.

That is a different animal from a grid-tied system with backup batteries. Grid-tied leans on the utility when the bank runs low, while off-grid has nothing behind it, so you size it for the worst week of the year instead of the average one. Most of the extra cost traces back to that one design difference.

Power is also only one of three problems. Settling it does nothing for water or wastewater, which carry their own permits and are covered in the guides on well and septic for Arizona desert land and water rights on desert parcels.

On a raw parcel, power, water and wastewater are worth working as three parallel tracks rather than in sequence. Solving two of them and stalling on the third still leaves a lot nobody can build on.

How much does it cost to bring the power line to your parcel?

Both utilities publish a free-footage allowance and charge you for everything past it. Neither publishes a firm per-foot price, because terrain, easements and whatever capacity is already in place move that number on every job.

UniSource Energy Services (UNS Electric)

UNS builds single-phase extensions to an individual residential applicant up to 550 feet at company expense, measured by the shortest feasible route from existing facilities to your nearest point of delivery and inclusive of the service drop. Beyond 550 feet you make a non-interest-bearing refundable cash deposit covering estimated construction cost for the footage over the allowance (UNS Electric Rules and Regulations Sheet 907, effective February 1, 2024, ACC Decision No. 79277).

The tariff’s worked example has a customer 1,500 feet out advancing $14,250 for the 950 feet over the allowance at $15.00 per foot. Read the note under it before you budget off that number, because the tariff says outright that “[t]he dollars in the example above are illustrative.”

Mohave Electric Cooperative

Mohave Electric builds single-phase extensions, overhead and underground, up to 625 feet without charge where the property served is not within a subdivision, and three-phase overhead up to 225 feet. Past the allowance you provide a refundable advance in aid of construction, costed from direct material, direct labor and overhead (Mohave Electric Service Rules and Regulations).

Two details that change the math

Underground costs more, and part of that money never comes back. With UNS, underground requires a non-refundable payment equal to the estimated difference between underground and equivalent overhead cost, on top of the refundable deposit that overhead would have required anyway. With Mohave Electric, the applicant supplies trenching, service wire, backfill, compaction, repaving and pull-box earthwork.

The word “refundable” is doing some work too. Under the UNS tariff, your deposit comes back only when a new separately metered customer connects to the line you paid for, and only when that new extension runs under 550 feet. The company reviews the deposit at five years, and anything unrefunded by then becomes a contribution in aid of construction.

The five-year clock is easy to overlook. If your parcel is the last one on the road, there is nobody coming along behind you to trigger that refund, so the advance is really a purchase with extra paperwork. If there are undeveloped parcels behind you that could tie in within 550 feet, your odds are better.

What does a realistic off-grid solar system cost?

No single figure fits every parcel, so start from a published benchmark and add for the off-grid parts. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory benchmarks the installed cost of a residential photovoltaic system, before any storage, at $3.25 per watt DC in 2024, down from $9.23 in 2010, a 65% reduction (NREL/TP-7A40-92536, January 2025). That is a whole-system number, not a panel price: modules, inverter, racking, labor and permitting are already inside it. Its paired storage benchmark that year assumes an 8-kW DC array with a 5-kW, 12.5-kWh battery.

Run the arithmetic: 8,000 watts at $3.25 is roughly $26,000 before a single battery. Treat that as a national grid-tied benchmark rather than a Mohave County off-grid quote. An off-grid system has to carry the whole load through a cloudy stretch, so the bank usually gets sized well past 12.5 kWh, and the inverter has to start your largest piece of equipment on its own.

The one thing working in your favor

The sun is the one part of this you do not have to fight. Long-term modeling at a Kingman-area location puts photovoltaic output at 1,912 kWh per kW of installed capacity per year, with global horizontal irradiation of 2,089 kWh/m² and an optimum tilt of 34 degrees (Global Solar Atlas, Solargis version 2.2.68, April 2026). Applied to NREL’s 8-kW benchmark array, that is roughly 15,300 kWh a year.

Cheap grid power raises the bar that off-grid has to clear. Arizona’s average residential retail price was 15.18 cents per kWh in June 2026, against a national 18.34 cents (EIA Electric Power Monthly Table 5.6.A). When the power you would be replacing is that cheap, distance to the pole ends up deciding most of these.

A Kingman-area parcel yields roughly 1,912 kWh of photovoltaic output per kW of installed capacity per year at an optimum 34-degree tilt (Global Solar Atlas, 2026). NREL’s storage benchmark pairs an 8-kW array with a 12.5-kWh battery (NREL/TP-7A40-92536, 2025), and off-grid sizing runs well above that pairing.

Do propane and a generator still matter if you have solar?

Yes, both still matter, though neither cost is publicly posted for Arizona.

Propane carries the loads that are expensive to serve with stored electricity: water heating, cooking, clothes drying and space heating. Before you take any Arizona propane figure at face value, know that the federal weekly series doesn’t report it. The EIA collects residential propane prices weekly during the heating season, October through March, and monthly from April through September, and its state table has no Arizona row (EIA propane price by state). Arizona sits in the EIA’s PADD 5 region (EIA glossary). The national weekly average was $2.674 per gallon for the week ending March 30, 2026 (EIA), which is useful context but nothing like a quote for your road.

A generator covers what a battery bank cannot: overcast winter days, a well pump cycling hard, the construction phase before the array is even commissioned. Size it to your peak draw rather than to the array, and settle fuel storage and the transfer arrangement with your electrician early.

How do you permit an off-grid system in Mohave County?

Through the same Development Services counter as everything else, and Arizona law caps what the county can charge. Under A.R.S. 11-323, a county’s solar permit fee “shall not exceed the actual cost of issuing a permit.” The same statute’s standards for permit applications, and its limit on requiring an engineering stamp, apply “For construction with solar photovoltaic systems that are intended to connect to a utility system,” so they don’t govern a fully off-grid installation.

Mohave County’s schedule lists a Solar Permit Issuance Fee of $23.00, a Solar Plan Check Fee of $35.00, and a Solar Inspection Fee covering two inspections per permit that runs from $41.32 to $323.56 depending on area. A Solar Automation Fee is added on top: $40.00 where inspection and plan check together come to more than $80.00, or half the combined total where they do not. An Electrical Permit Issuance Fee of $39.00 is listed separately (Mohave County Building Fee Schedule, Ordinance 2018-02, rev. 11/01/22).

Your system is inspected against the codes the county has adopted, the 2018 International Codes and the 2017 National Electrical Code (Mohave County Building Division), and being off-grid does not lower that bar. One item on the residential checklist matters early: an approved septic system is required for all projects with plumbing (Mohave County residential permitting). Confirm current fees with Mohave County Development Services at 3250 E Kino Ave in Kingman, (928) 757-0903.

How do lenders treat an off-grid parcel?

Financing is the piece to settle in writing. What the published guidelines say matters more than what a loan officer tells you over the phone.

On the conventional side, Fannie Mae’s appraisal guidance states that “the utilities of the property must meet community standards,” and where public sewer or water is unavailable, private well and septic facilities must be available, used by the property, and viable on an ongoing basis (Fannie Mae Selling Guide B4-1.3-04, updated 06/04/2025). That phrase, community standards, is the one doing the work, so ask the lender and appraiser early how they will read it for your parcel.

FHA’s minimum property requirements say each living unit must have “electricity adequate for lighting and for mechanical equipment used in the living unit” (FHA Handbook 4000.1). Nothing in that sentence says the electricity has to come from a utility.

FHA addresses solar directly too, in two separate places that are easy to run together. Under the solar and wind technologies policy, which is what lets a lender roll a new system into the loan amount, photovoltaic systems must “provide electricity for the residence, and must meet applicable fire and electrical code requirement,” and “[t]he Borrower must own, not lease, solar or wind energy systems for the systems to be considered eligible improvements.” That ownership rule governs what can be financed, not whether the house qualifies at all.

Separately, FHA says a property that carries leased equipment or a power purchase agreement “may be eligible for FHA-insured financing but only when such agreements are free of restrictions that prevent the Borrower from freely transferring the Property” (FHA Handbook 4000.1). So a leased array on a house you are buying is not an automatic disqualifier. It just cannot be financed into the mortgage, and the lease has to leave you free to sell. Confirm current handbook language with your lender, and see the VA loan guide for Kingman and Bullhead City if you are using VA financing.

Property tax and lending look at a solar system differently. For Arizona property tax purposes, solar energy devices “are considered to add no value to the property on which such a device or system is installed” (A.R.S. 42-11054). For lending purposes, that same system is part of how an appraiser judges whether your utilities meet community standards. The assessor has to look past the array while the underwriter is looking straight at it.

So get written confirmation that your lender will lend on an off-grid parcel in your area, and get it before you remove the financing contingency. Not every lender that says yes to Mohave County says yes to a parcel with no meter.

What happened to the tax credits?

The federal one ended. The IRS confirms the residential clean energy credit “will not be allowed for any expenditures made after December 31, 2025,” and that an expenditure is treated as made when the original installation is completed, so work finished after that date does not qualify even if the equipment was bought earlier (IRS Fact Sheet FS-2025-05, August 21, 2025). If a 2026 quote still pencils in 30% back from Washington, it is off by roughly 30% of the system price.

Three Arizona provisions still apply:

• State income tax credit: 25% of the cost of the device, capped at $1,000 in a taxable year and $1,000 in aggregate for the same residence, carried forward up to five consecutive years (A.R.S. 43-1083).
• Sales tax: sales of solar energy devices are deducted from the retail tax base, and the retailer has to register with the department as a solar energy retailer (A.R.S. 42-5061). Ask your installer whether they are registered. That deduction covers retail sales of the equipment, so also ask how tax applies to an installation contract.
• Property tax: your system adds no assessed value (A.R.S. 42-11054).

So which way should you go?

Work it in this order, and get both quotes before you waive anything.

1. Measure the distance from existing utility facilities to your building site along a feasible route, not as the crow flies.
2. Request the free preliminary estimate. The UNS tariff has the company prepare a preliminary design and rough cost estimate at no charge.
3. Get two off-grid quotes that put array size, battery capacity, inverter rating and generator interface in writing.
4. Compare the ongoing costs. Staying connected carries a fixed monthly price regardless of use: a $14.00 basic service charge on UniSource’s residential time-of-use rate (Rate ERREST) and a $30.30 monthly customer charge at Mohave Electric (rates). Off-grid trades that for battery replacement and fuel.
5. Confirm financing in writing before the contingency period closes.

One figure undercuts the “I’ll just sell power back to them” plan. Mohave Electric’s distributed generation export compensation is $0.035320 per kWh effective January 1, 2024, while its residential energy charge runs $0.080249 to $0.110249 (Mohave Electric rates). Exports credit at roughly 44% of what the cheapest tier costs to buy, and under a third of the top tier.

If you want real numbers on a specific parcel, our team at Keller Williams Arizona Living Realty has worked Mohave County for more than 20 years out of offices in Kingman and Bullhead City. Get in touch or browse current Mohave County land listings.

Frequently Asked Questions

How far from a power line does off-grid start to make sense?

There is no fixed distance, because per-foot cost is site specific. The trigger is the allowance: UniSource builds 550 feet of single-phase residential extension at its own expense, Mohave Electric 625 feet where the property is not within a subdivision (UNS Sheet 907; Mohave Electric). Past that, compare the utility’s line-extension estimate to two off-grid quotes. UniSource’s tariff says it will prepare a preliminary design and rough estimate without charge.

Can I get a mortgage on an off-grid house in Mohave County?

Often yes, but confirm it in writing first. Fannie Mae requires a property’s utilities to “meet community standards” (B4-1.3-04), and FHA requires each living unit to have “electricity adequate for lighting and for mechanical equipment” without naming a utility source (Handbook 4000.1). Lender overlays vary, so get written confirmation before removing your financing contingency.

Is there still a 30% federal tax credit for off-grid solar in 2026?

No. The federal residential clean energy credit, which equaled 30% of the cost of qualified property (IRS), “will not be allowed for any expenditures made after December 31, 2025,” with an expenditure treated as made when installation is completed (IRS FS-2025-05). Arizona’s 25% credit, capped at $1,000 with a five-year carryforward, still applies (A.R.S. 43-1083).

What does Mohave County charge to permit a solar installation?

The published schedule lists a $23.00 solar permit issuance fee, a $35.00 solar plan check fee, and a solar inspection fee covering two inspections that ranges from $41.32 to $323.56 depending on the inspection area (Mohave County Building Fee Schedule). Arizona law caps county solar permit fees at the actual cost of issuing the permit (A.R.S. 11-323).

The short version

Out here the decision usually comes down to distance rather than technology. The allowances, the county fees, the tax rules and the solar resource are all published, and you can look every one of them up this week. The two numbers that decide it are not published: what your utility quotes to run the line, and what a pair of installers quote to replace it. Once you have both of those in writing, the choice is usually obvious.

Earlier in the process? Start with buying acreage in Mohave County, what it costs to build near Kingman, the best areas to buy land, and the manufactured home placement rules.

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Sources

All figures below were verified on 2026-09-21. Utility line-extension costs and solar system costs are site specific. The allowances, fees and tax rules are published; the quotes are not.

1. UNS Electric, Inc. Rules and Regulations, Section 7: Line Extensions, Original Sheet No. 907. Effective February 1, 2024, ACC Decision No. 79277. https://docs.uesaz.com/wp-content//uploads/907-UNSE-Line-Extensions.pdf
2. UNS Electric, Inc. Residential Service Time-of-Use, Rate ERREST, Sheet No. 102. Effective February 1, 2024, ACC Decision No. 79277. https://docs.uesaz.com/wp-content/uploads/102-ERREST-Clean.pdf
3. Mohave Electric Cooperative. Service Rules and Regulations. https://www.mohaveelectric.com/member-service/rates/service-rules-regulations/
4. Mohave Electric Cooperative. Rates. https://www.mohaveelectric.com/member-service/rates/
5. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Documenting 15 Years of Reductions in U.S. Solar Photovoltaic System Costs, NREL/TP-7A40-92536, January 2025. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/2522804
6. Global Solar Atlas (World Bank / ESMAP / Solargis). Long-term annual averages at 35.1894, -114.0530. Data version 2.2.68, updated 2026-04-01. https://globalsolaratlas.info/detail?c=35.1894,-114.053,11&s=35.1894,-114.053&m=site
7. Internal Revenue Service. FAQs for modification of sections 25C, 25D and others under Public Law 119-21, Fact Sheet FS-2025-05, August 21, 2025. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/faqs-for-modification-of-sections-25c-25d-25e-30c-30d-45l-45w-and-179d-under-public-law-119-21-139-stat-72-july-4-2025-commonly-known-as-the-one-big-beautiful-bill-obbb
8. Arizona Revised Statutes 43-1083, Credit for solar energy devices. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/43/01083.htm
9. Arizona Revised Statutes 42-11054, Standard appraisal methods and techniques. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/42/11054.htm
10. Arizona Revised Statutes 42-5061, Retail classification. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/42/05061.htm
11. Arizona Revised Statutes 11-323, Solar construction permits; standards; definition. https://www.azleg.gov/ars/11/00323.htm
12. Mohave County Development Services. Building Fee Schedule, Ordinance 2018-02, rev. 11/01/22. https://www.mohave.gov/departments/development-services/building-division/documents/mohave-county-building-fee-schedule/
13. Mohave County Development Services. Building Division. https://www.mohave.gov/departments/development-services/building-division/
14. Mohave County Development Services. Building Division: Residential. https://www.mohave.gov/departments/development-services/building-division/residential/
15. Fannie Mae. Selling Guide B4-1.3-04, Site Section of the Appraisal Report, updated 06/04/2025. https://selling-guide.fanniemae.com/sel/b4-1.3-04/site-section-appraisal-report
16. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. FHA Single Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1, currently published version. https://www.hud.gov/sites/default/files/Housing/documents/40001-hsgh-Update-18.pdf
17. U.S. Energy Information Administration. Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, June 2026 data, released August 26, 2026. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a
18. U.S. Energy Information Administration. Weekly U.S. Propane Residential Price, week ending March 30, 2026. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=W_EPLLPA_PRS_NUS_DPG&f=W
19. U.S. Energy Information Administration. Weekly Propane Residential Price by state and PADD. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_wfr_a_EPLLPA_PRS_dpgal_w.htm
20. Internal Revenue Service. Residential Clean Energy Credit. https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/residential-clean-energy-credit
21. U.S. Energy Information Administration. Glossary: PADD. https://www.eia.gov/tools/glossary/index.php?id=P
22. U.S. Energy Information Administration. Weekly Heating Oil and Propane Prices: definitions. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/TblDefs/pet_pri_wfr_tbldef2.asp
23. Mohave County Development Services. https://www.mohave.gov/departments/development-services/