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How much do solar panels cost?

Updated

General information, not a substitute for the advice of an attorney.

Short answer: In 2023, the median price a homeowner paid for a stand-alone rooftop system ranged from $3.2 to $5.2 per watt depending on the state, before any incentive (LBNL Tracking the Sun 2024). A utility-scale plant is far cheaper per watt: NREL's 2024 Annual Technology Baseline puts the 2022 overnight capital cost at $1.43 per watt AC (NREL ATB 2024). The federal residential credit under section 25D is not allowed for expenditures made after December 31, 2025 (IRS Fact Sheet 2025-05).

Rooftop and commercial prices

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Tracking the Sun series compiles prices from roughly 3.7 million PV systems reported by 72 entities in 31 states. Its 2024 edition, covering systems installed through 2023, gives these state-level ranges of median installed price, paid by host owners before incentives (LBNL Tracking the Sun 2024):

  • Residential: $3.2 to $5.2 per watt; median system size 7.4 kW.
  • Small non-residential: $2.6 to $4.1 per watt.
  • Large non-residential: $1.8 to $2.6 per watt; median non-residential size 26 kW.
  • Stand-alone residential prices fell by roughly $0.1 per watt in inflation-adjusted terms from 2022 to 2023; non-residential prices rose $0.1 to $0.2 per watt, the first increase in 15 years.

Our arithmetic: at the median residential size of 7.4 kW, the state range works out to roughly $23,700 to $38,500 before incentives, using both LBNL figures above.

Utility-scale prices

NREL's ATB models a 100 MWdc (74.6 MWac) one-axis tracking plant with bifacial modules. Its base-year capital cost, from Q1 2022 pricing and including grid connection, is $1.43 per watt AC, with a DC-to-AC inverter loading ratio of 1.34 and operations and maintenance of $24 per kWac per year (NREL ATB 2024). Per watt, that is roughly a third of the residential price, which is why land-lease solar and rooftop solar are different businesses.

The tax credit changed

Under Public Law 119-21, the IRS states that the section 25D 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 a system finished in 2026 does not qualify even if it was paid for in 2025 (IRS Fact Sheet 2025-05; announced in IR-2025-86, August 21, 2025).

See rooftop solar and net metering by state, how long solar panels last, how many acres a solar farm needs, and the permit finder.

General information from the sources linked above, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

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