Key Takeaways
How much does it cost to install solar in 2026? In 2026, most residential solar systems in the U.S. cost between roughly $2.41 and $3.34 per watt, putting a typical 12 kW system around $29,000 to $40,000 before any state incentives. The total cost depends far more on your energy usage, equipment choices, roof complexity, and battery storage than on the size of your home.
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It’s one of the first questions every solar sales rep hears. A homeowner calls in, and before you can even introduce yourself, they ask: “I have a 2,000 square foot home, how much solar do I need, and what would that cost?”
You can’t fault anyone for thinking that way. Square footage is how we think about the size of a home. It is how we price renovations, estimate paint, and calculate flooring. It makes sense that a homeowner would assume it applies to solar, too.
In my time selling solar, I have seen small two-bedroom homes running 2,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) a month and large four-bedroom houses using half that. What I used to tell every homeowner was that how much solar you need depended less on your home and more on how you live in it.
Do you have an electric vehicle? A hot tub? Do you keep the thermostat at 68 degrees all year, or are you a windows-open house? How new are your appliances, and are they high efficiency? Do you work from home? All of those factors matter far more than the square footage under your roof.
If square footage does not determine the cost of going solar, what does?
Table of Contents
How Solar Pricing Actually Works
Like any contracting business, there are a lot of moving parts and pieces of the puzzle that factor into a solar installation. It isn’t quite as simple as “slap some panels on the roof”.
The solar industry prices systems by a metric called “price per watt” (PPW). It sounds technical, but the concept is straightforward. Every solar installation involves a collection of components:
- Panels
- Inverter(s)
- MLPE (optimizers, MPPT)
- Racking hardware
- Electrical balance-of-system materials like wiring, conduit, junction boxes, etc
- Labor
- Permitting and Inspection
- Overhead (facilities, salaries, etc)
- Company margin
- Customer acquisition costs
Rather than pricing each project from scratch, the industry takes all of those inputs and averages them down to a cost per watt of installed solar capacity.
Solar systems are sized in watts (W) or kilowatts (kW = 1000 W), and system size is what actually scales with your energy use. Let’s say you have 10 400W panels, which means your system size is 4000 W (4 kW).
A home using a lot of electricity needs a larger system. A home using less needs a smaller one. By expressing price as a cost per watt, solar companies can apply a consistent pricing framework regardless of whether a system is 6 kilowatts or 16 kilowatts.
The formula is simple. Take the price per watt, multiply it by the total number of watts in the system, and you have your total system cost.
Adders
Another wrinkle in solar system pricing comes in the form of adders. These are additional costs that can be added to a solar install depending on the work needed, installation conditions, or additional products.
Batteries, for example, could be an adder to the system cost. Some of the most common adders include:
- Roof Pitch: Higher-pitched roofs typically come with adders because they are more difficult to install on. Similarly, non-standard roofs (cedar shake, tile, flat membrane) can also come with adders because they require non-standard mounting equipment.
- Electrical Upgrades: If your home needs a sub-panel installed or a main service panel upgrade, these increase costs.
- Trenching: If you have land and choose to install a ground-mounted system instead of one on your roof, the ground-mounted racking may come as an adder, as will trenching wire underground back to your home’s electric service panel.
- System Size: Smaller systems can sometimes have adders, and conversely, larger systems can have their costs reduced. The price-per-watt method works well for scaling, but can over- or under-account for flat-rate costs like permitting.
What Are Prices Currently Sitting At?
Here is where it gets a little complicated: the honest answer is that it depends on where you live.
EnergySage has a great interactive map showing average solar prices across the US. Their map suggests that solar prices tend to run higher in northern states and lower in some southern markets, interestingly. Geography, the labor market, permitting costs, competition among installers, and state policy environments all play a role in driving price differences from one region to the next.
Average prices can also run higher in markets like California or Hawaii that don’t offer Net Metering programs. Without credit for energy sent back to the grid, installing battery storage becomes necessary to utilize solar energy fully, increasing costs.
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association’s (SEIA) market insight report for Q4 2025, actual equipment costs make up roughly one-third of the total average cost of residential solar.
As for the national average, different sources will give you different numbers. Some databases put the average as low as $2.41 per watt. The SEIA puts it closer to $3.34 per watt. The spread between those two figures reflects the real variation in the market. Geography matters, and so does the installer you choose to work with.
EnergySage also reports that the average system installed in the United States is roughly 12 kilowatts. Here is what that looks like across common system sizes at both price points, along with estimated payback periods. Last year, we published a study looking at the payback period of solar energy systems without the federal tax credit. Our analysis used the US average electric rate of $0.173/kWh and a 2.89% annual utility escalation rate, which is the actual 10-year average rate increase in this country.
| System Size | Low End ($2.41/W) | High End ($3.34/W) | Est. Payback Period* | Typical Home Profile |
| 6 kW | $14,460 | $20,040 | 9 to 12 years | Small home, low energy use |
| 8 kW | $19,280 | $26,720 | 10 to 13 years | Average home, moderate use |
| 10 kW | $24,100 | $33,400 | 10 to 14 years | Larger home or EV owner |
| 12 kW | $28,920 | $40,080 | 11 to 15 years | National average system size |
| 14 kW | $33,740 | $46,760 | 11 to 15 years | High usage or partial battery backup |
| 16 kW | $38,560 | $53,440 | 12 to 16 years | Large home, high usage, EV |
*Payback estimates assume no federal tax credit, 100% energy usage, and estimates of energy production via PVWatts. Your actual payback will vary based on your utility rate, local incentives, and system production.
One thing worth noting: our research found that even without the federal tax credit, solar systems not only pay for themselves but also generate tens of thousands of dollars in additional value over 30 years. The payback period is longer than it was a year ago, but the long-term math still holds up.
That is a wide range across all system sizes, and it is worth sitting with that for a moment. The difference between a $2.41/W installer and a $3.34/W installer on a 12 kW system is more than $11,000. That gap does not always reflect a difference in quality. It can reflect installer overhead, marketing costs, brand premiums, or simply a competitive local market. Getting multiple quotes is not just good advice; it’s essential.
What You Actually Need to Know Before Getting Quotes
If you’re looking to go solar, the first thing you need to do is pull your last 12 months of electric bills. You want your annual kilowatt-hour (kWh) usage, not your monthly dollar amount, because electric rates vary and dollar amounts are not a clean input for sizing a system. Most utilities show your usage history in your online account, and many will send it on request.
Your annual kWh usage number will be the basis of your solar quote. Solar providers will utilize that to build a system that offsets as much of that as possible. That will tell them how many panels your home needs (or can support), which determines the cost.
A few other things worth knowing before you shop:
System size is not the only variable. Panel efficiency, inverter type, roof orientation, shading, and local utility net metering policies all affect how much energy your system actually produces, what it costs, and how much you save.
The federal residential tax credit is gone in 2026. The 30% federal residential solar tax credit that homeowners have relied on since 2005 is no longer available, which changes the payback math. State and local incentives still exist in many markets and are worth researching before you commit to a purchase.
Long-term maintenance should be a key consideration. As much as some solar installers like to claim solar is “set it and forget it”, it’s not. Solar equipment is likely to fail at some point in the next 30 years, or at least require some maintenance. Most manufacturer and installer workmanship warranties don’t cover labor costs for repairs and are worthless if the installer or manufacturer goes out of business. If you work with a Solar Insure Certified Provider, you can get 30-year coverage on critical system equipment and labor, as well as protection against default.
Solar pricing is not as opaque as it can feel at first. Once you understand how the industry structures costs, the quotes you receive start to make more sense, and you are in a much better position to evaluate them.
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