All of it. Hampton is our most established Franklin County market and the only town here large enough for its own dedicated page, but SolQ installs residential solar throughout the county — Ackley, Sheffield, Dows, Latimer, Alexander, Geneva, and every smaller Franklin County town in between. This page exists specifically to cover the whole county, not just Hampton.

If you live anywhere inside Franklin County’s borders, we almost certainly serve you. We named every incorporated Franklin County community we could confirm on this page, but unincorporated addresses and rural routes, including Chapin and Bradford, are covered too. Reach out and we’ll confirm coverage, utility, and crediting terms for your specific address before you commit to anything.

Yes — Hampton has its own dedicated SolQ page with city-specific pricing, utility, and permitting detail. This county page is the place to start if you live somewhere smaller than Hampton, or if you’re not sure which page applies to you.

It depends on where you are. MidAmerican Energy is the largest provider, serving most of Hampton, Sheffield, Latimer, Geneva, Hansell, and Ackley. Franklin Rural Electric Cooperative, headquartered in Hampton, serves a meaningful share of Hampton and Sheffield along with smaller slices of Latimer, Alexander, and Popejoy. Alliant Energy serves all of Dows and Coulter and most of Popejoy and Alexander. Prairie Energy Cooperative and Midland Power Cooperative also serve parts of the county. We confirm your exact provider before designing your system.

MidAmerican doesn’t use traditional net metering in Iowa. Instead, it credits solar customers through an Inflow/Outflow rate: you’re billed the retail rate for power MidAmerican delivers to your home, and separately credited for power you send to the grid, tracked in real 15-minute intervals rather than a simple monthly total. Unused credits carry over to future billing periods.

Franklin REC, as a member-owned cooperative, has its own crediting structure for member-owned generation that differs from a for-profit utility’s published tariff. We haven’t found a specific public net-metering rate posted by Franklin REC, so we confirm the exact terms for your account directly with the co-op before you sign anything, the same approach we use for every member-owned utility we work with.

Alliant, serving Dows, Coulter, and most of Popejoy and Alexander, credits production under its Rate IO tariff or a legacy Rate NM net-metering tariff for accounts that already had it. Prairie Energy Cooperative, serving a smaller share of Alexander, is a member cooperative similar to Franklin REC — we confirm its specific crediting terms during your free consultation.

No. Iowa’s state income-tax credit for residential solar isn’t available for systems installed after 2021. Two state benefits still apply regardless: a 5-year property-tax exemption on the added home value from your system, and a sales-tax exemption on qualifying solar equipment (labor is still taxable).

If you’re buying your system outright through cash or a loan, the federal Residential Clean Energy Credit (Section 25D) ended for systems placed in service after December 31, 2025, under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed in July 2025. If you go with a Lease or PPA instead, the benefit is still built in indirectly: our financing partner owns the system and claims a separate federal credit for commercial-owned solar (Section 48E, active through 2027), which is part of how they can offer $0-down payments below what you’re currently paying your utility. We’ll walk you through exactly what applies to you during your free consultation.

Not yet, and we’d rather tell you that directly than dress it up. We don’t have a completed install on record specifically in Hampton or anywhere else in Franklin County. What backs every Franklin County project is the same track record behind our 1,179 completed Iowa installs statewide, including 40 completed installs in nearby Mason City and 11 in Clear Lake, both in neighboring Cerro Gordo County.

Franklin County sees real North Iowa winter weather, and panels are engineered for that seasonal range: steep-mount racking sheds snow faster than a roof’s own pitch, and panels typically clear themselves within a day or two of a storm as they warm in the sun. Production dips in December and January and climbs sharply in spring and summer, which your system design accounts for from the start.

Yes, and they vary by municipality. Hampton runs its own permitting process, separate from Franklin County’s own rules for unincorporated areas and its smaller towns. We handle the paperwork with your specific city or the county, and file the interconnection application with your utility, so you don’t have to sort out which office to call.

Many projects are installed in as soon as 30 days. Some take longer, up to 2-3 months, depending on your municipality’s permitting timeline and your utility’s interconnection queue — a co-op like Franklin REC may move differently than MidAmerican. We give you a realistic timeline for your specific address up front.

Yes. SolQ offers the same cash, loan, and $0-down Lease/PPA options everywhere in Franklin County, whether you’re in Hampton, Sheffield, Ackley, or a smaller town like Latimer or Coulter. What changes by address is which utility credits your production and which municipality handles your permit — not which financing options are on the table.