Cost Of Solar Panels Per Square Meter – Panel costs have dropped dramatically over the past few decades, and with electricity rates set to rise sharply in 2022, the home now offers more cost-saving potential than ever before.
In fact, the 2023 Heatmap Climate Survey found that 46% of US adults intend to power their homes with panels in the future, while 13% already do.
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So what’s standing in the way of American homeowners and panelists? The biggest hurdle is often the cost of the panel. And like a monster in a horror movie, the cost of the panel is a lot less scary once you shed some light on it and understand how it works.
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As always, our goal is to empower you with the resources and knowledge to make educated decisions throughout the process.
Panel prices have fallen significantly over the past decade as the industry matured and reached greater global production.
Since 2010, residential panel prices have fallen nearly 50% while U.S. installations have risen more than 2,000%. The modest increase in home prices from 2020-2023 is attributed to supply chain disruptions from the pandemic. U.S. prices are expected to continue falling largely in the coming years as domestic manufacturing plants come online
As with computers, large-screen TVs and mobile phones, the economies of scale enjoyed by panels created a dramatic cost curve that fundamentally changed the energy industry.
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Utility-scale installations are now cheaper than all other forms of power generation in many parts of the world and will continue to replace old, dirty coal and natural gas-fired power plants.
Today’s premium monocrystalline panels typically cost between $1 and $1.50 per watt, putting a single 400-watt panel between $400 and $600, depending on how you buy it.
Less efficient polycrystalline panels are typically cheaper by $0.75 per watt, putting the cost of a 400 watt panel at $300.
You Buy It If you buy through a full-service installer, you’ll likely get a lower price for each panel than if you bought it individually from a retail store.
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It’s worth noting (as we’ll explore further below) that modules typically account for less than 20% of the overall cost of a home installation. So choosing less expensive (and lower quality) panels is not a very effective way to reduce the overall cost of a project.
A fully installed system typically costs $3 to $5 per watt before the 30% tax credit applies. Using these measurements, a 5,000 watt (5 kW) system would cost $15,00 to $25,000 in total.
Costs per watt are often in the $3-$4 range for large and relatively straightforward projects. Claiming incentives like tax credits and deductions can lower your PPW even further.
Calculating the cost per watt for a system is very simple – it’s simply the cost of the system divided by the number of watts in the system.
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Price per watt ($/W) allows an apples-to-apples comparison of different quotes that may differ in total power, panel brand, etc.
Pro tip: It can be helpful to know your cost per watt before and after claiming the 30% tax credit.
Ultimately, many factors go into the cost per watt of a system, but the average cost is typically as low as $2.75 per watt. This price will vary if a project requires special add-ons such as ground mounting, a main panel upgrade, an EV charger, etc.
Another measure of the relative cost of energy is its price per kilowatt-hour (kWh). While the cost per watt takes into account the size of the system, the cost per kilowatt refers to the cost of the system per unit of energy it produces over a period of time.
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A kilowatt-hour is a unit of energy and is equal to 1000 watts – or 1 kilowatt – of energy consumed in one hour. For reference, an energy-efficient clothes dryer uses about 2 kWh of electricity per load, while a central air conditioner uses about 3 kWh per hour.
Although cost per watt is more useful for comparing the relative costs of offerings, energy cost per kilowatt is best used to indicate the cost of purchasing energy from an electrical unit.
For example, the average cost of a purchased system is 6-8 cents per kilowatt, depending on system size, equipment type and local incentives.
Based on these prices, it costs about 46 cents to dry laundry using grid electricity in New York and only 14 cents to dry a load of electricity.
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There are several ways to get a rough estimate of how much the panels will cost without landing a sales pitch. It includes:
First, you can use an online cost calculator, such as this one powered by Just enter your address and your average monthly electricity bill and the calculator will compare the cost side-by-side with what you pay for utility electricity.
But before you use any panel cost calculator, it’s important to understand that there are dozens of variables that affect panel cost, and the calculators work by making assumptions about those variables.
For example, your savings largely depend on how much utility rates rise over 25 years. Most calculators assume annual inflation of 3-5% based on historical averages – but no one can know for sure where prices will go over the next 25 years.
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Savings are also geographically sensitive as each state has different incentives, electricity rates, solar exposure and net metering policies.
For example, a panel cost calculator for California may have vastly different estimates than a cost calculator for New York.
If you prefer to do your calculations offline, there are a few simple steps to estimate your system costs based on your electricity usage.
Once you have your average daily electricity consumption, follow the steps in the chart below. Here are some tips:
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If manual calculations aren’t your thing, you can get a quick and dirty estimate based on the cost of comparable homes.
A third – and less accurate – way to get an idea of how much panels your home will cost is to look at how many panels cost for houses.
Now, we encourage you to talk to friends, family and neighbors who have installed the system to understand the pros, cons and costs. However, we’ve done a lot of the work for you.
We analyzed thousands of systems sold in 2022 to find the average cost of home panels based on square footage of living space and number of bedrooms.
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After considering the 30% tax credit, the panels cost $8.77 per square foot of seating. However, the cost per square foot varies based on the size of the home.
For example, the after-tax cost of the panel for a 2,500-square-foot home is about $20,000 at $7.96 per square foot.
But how much does the panel cost for a 1,500 square foot home? Average system costs drop by just over $1,000 and costs per square foot increase by $12.83.
If you don’t know your home’s square footage, you can look it up on Zillow or use the number of bedrooms to get a rough estimate.
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The median pre-stimulus home cost for a three-bedroom home is $29,161, or $20,412 after claiming the 30% tax credit.
However, as the chart below shows, the number of bedrooms isn’t a great indicator of a system’s size and cost—or living space, either.
Systems are typically sized based on power consumption—not square footage or number of bedrooms. This is because a two-bedroom house with two EVs and an electric heat pump is likely to use more electricity than a four-bedroom house with no EVs and gas heating.
So, you can use this method to access the exact location, but remember that the previous two methods are more accurate.
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Once you have a rough estimate of the cost for your system, it’s time to compare it to the cost of purchasing electricity from a utility provider to see how much you can save going forward.
Yes, homeowners across the United States can save money on energy costs by powering their homes with panels instead of buying electricity from a utility. This is especially true after the rapid increase in grid electricity tariffs in 2022 and 2023.
The house is basically a way to buy a lot of electricity – like buying a giant can of coffee grounds from Costco instead of 50 individual cups at Starbucks. The $25 case costs more up front, but only 9 Grande Lattes pay off at $3 each after that, giving you $125 in lifetime savings.
These factors vary from home to family, so let’s take a look at the monthly electrical average