What a board with rules may still require

Subsection 3 lists the requirements an association's rules may impose. It is a closed list, and each item carries its own limit:

• Panels not facing a street — but only “so long as complying with this requirement does not result in a decrease in the production of the distributed generation system of more than 10 percent, as determined using the PVWatts Calculator maintained by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the United States Department of Energy.”
• Conduits painted to match the exterior of the unit to which the system is affixed.
• Batteries stored in a garage.
• Inverters placed out of view.
• For a roof the association maintains, a recorded agreement covering damage, removal, insurance naming the association as an additional insured, indemnity, inspection rights, and disclosure to future buyers.

The PVWatts reference is the most unusual piece of drafting in Nevada's 2025 session. The Legislature did not leave “unreasonable loss of production” to argument; it named a specific federal modelling tool and a specific number. An association demanding that panels be moved off a street-facing plane is making a claim that can be tested in an afternoon, by either side, for free.

What a board may not do

Subsection 4 contains a prohibition aimed at a real dispute:

“(a) Unreasonably restrict, prohibit or withhold approval for a unit's owner to install any type of physical barrier around the distributed generation system to deter the intrusion of animals or to hide components of the system for aesthetic purposes…”

This is the pigeon problem. Critter guard around a rooftop array is a functional necessity in much of Nevada and has been a recurring architectural-review fight. The statute resolves it in the owner's favour, and permits an association to specify a colour only where that colour is commercially available as a stock item — which forecloses a custom-colour requirement that would fail the 3 percent test anyway.

How the two tests work together

An owner facing an expensive condition now has two independent arguments, and they are mechanical rather than rhetorical:

1. The money argument. Get an independent estimate from a licensed Nevada solar contractor, dated within 60 days, itemising what compliance costs. If it exceeds 3 percent of the contract price, the rule cannot be applied.
2. The production argument. If the condition is a panel-orientation requirement, run PVWatts. If the loss exceeds 10 percent, the requirement is outside what subsection 3 permits.

Neither argument requires a lawyer, and both produce a document the association has to answer.

What this means for a board writing rules now

Because NRS 116.333(4) strips all discretion from an association with no adopted rules, the incentive to adopt rules is strong. But a board drafting them should understand what it is actually buying: the right to a 35-day review and to deny on stated grounds, within a list of permitted requirements that the statute has already priced.

• Write the rules to the list. A requirement outside subsection 3 is not enforceable merely because it is in your rules.
• Cost your own requirements before adopting them. A screening specification that reliably exceeds 3 percent of a typical installation is a rule you will lose every time an owner produces an estimate.
• Do not write a critter-guard prohibition. Subsection 4 forecloses it.
• Handle association-maintained roofs through the recorded agreement, which is the mechanism the statute gives you for the legitimate concerns — damage, removal for re-roofing, insurance, and disclosure to the next buyer.

One thing Nevada did not do in the same session

It is worth stating the contrast plainly, because owners assume the two travel together. Nevada now has a detailed statutory right to install rooftop solar in a common-interest community. It has no equivalent statutory right to install an electric-vehicle charger. The 2025 bill that would have created one did not pass, and that absence is covered separately.