Published prices, the incentives you can actually apply for today, and a private estimator to see roughly where you land. No inflated savings claims.
All figures footnoted below. Last reviewed 24 July 2026.
Marketplace averages, before any incentives. Use these to sanity check a quote. Prices vary widely by state, roof and installer.
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Defaults reflect published averages. The US residential electricity price has run at roughly 17 to 19 cents per kWh through 2025 and 2026,[2] and $2.60 per watt is the current marketplace average.[1] The model assumes about 1,300 kWh generated per kW of solar per year, a mid range figure. Sunny regions do better, cloudy northern roofs worse. It uses simple payback and ignores maintenance, panel degradation, financing interest and future rate rises.
Programmes change with legislation and budgets, and most are set locally rather than nationally. Treat this as a checklist of what to look up for your own address.
DSIRE is the standard public database of US state, local and utility incentives for renewables and efficiency. Enter your zip code to see what currently applies where you live, then confirm each programme on the operator's own site.[3]
Several states run their own credits, upfront rebates or performance payments, and these are now the main route to reducing upfront cost in the US. Availability varies enormously by state, and programmes with fixed budgets can close mid year once funds run out.[3]
Many states exempt solar equipment from sales tax, or exclude the added home value from property tax assessments. These are easy to overlook because they never arrive as a cheque, but they change the real cost of ownership.[3]
What your utility pays for exported power drives payback more than almost anything else. Full retail net metering is the most valuable arrangement. Many utilities have moved to lower export rates, which makes using your own solar, and storing it, more valuable. See our time of use guide.
Your own utility may offer battery rebates, demand response payments or a virtual power plant scheme that pays you for letting them draw on your stored energy at peak times. Utility schemes are often not captured promptly in national databases, so check the utility site directly.[3]
With a lease or power purchase agreement the provider owns the system and claims any credits available to them as a business, ideally passing the benefit through as a lower rate.[1] Compare total contract cost against buying outright. The cheapest monthly payment is not always the cheapest deal.
The long run trend is dramatic and well documented. IRENA puts the global average cost of electricity from utility scale solar at 0.460 dollars per kWh in 2010, falling to 0.043 dollars per kWh in 2024, a decline of about 90 percent, leaving new utility solar roughly 41 percent below the cheapest fossil fuel option.[4]
Deployment followed the same curve. Global installed solar capacity rose from roughly 40 GW in 2010 to 2,392 GW at the end of 2025, with a record 511 GW added during 2025 alone.[5]
IRENA attributes the cost decline mainly to cheaper modules and inverters, together responsible for about 55 percent of the fall since 2010, alongside better capacity factors and lower installation and operating costs.[4] Cell technology is still improving, as covered in our technology section.
For households the practical consequence is that hardware is often no longer the main expense. Labour, permitting, sales and overheads, the so called soft costs, make up a large share of a residential quote. That is exactly why quotes for identical hardware can differ by thousands, and it is where your negotiating leverage sits.
One caveat against over optimism: the decline is not perfectly smooth. IRENA recorded a slight increase of 0.6 percent in solar LCOE in 2024, which it links to changing financing conditions.[4]
Tax and incentive rules change and depend on your circumstances. Nothing here is tax, financial or legal advice. Confirm your own position with the programme operator, your state energy office, your utility, or a qualified adviser.
