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Solar Cost Calculator , system cost by panel type and installed capacity

Pick a panel type, a quality tier and a system size, and see the range with its breakdown. No email, no phone number, no site visit booked for you.

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Published August 13, 2026

Figures updated August 13, 2026

The tool

Price your system

Quality tier

Economy Mid-range Premium

System size, in W

Installed capacity in watts. Size it from a year of your own electricity bills rather than from the roof: a system that generates more than you use is money spent to sell power back at wholesale.

Add-ons the bid will carry

Battery storage A home battery roughly doubles a straightforward system. It buys backup and self-consumption, not extra generation. Main panel or service upgrade An older service cannot always accept a backfeed breaker. Quoted by an electrician and discovered at design, not at install. Roof repair or replacement first Panels last 25 years and a worn roof does not. Removing and re-setting an array later costs more than doing the roof now. Complex or steep roof Multiple planes, dormers and steep pitch mean more racking, more penetrations and slower work per panel. Shading mitigation Microinverters or optimisers so one shaded panel stops dragging its whole string, plus any tree work. Permits and interconnection Building permit, utility interconnection application and the inspection that lets the system be switched on.

Region

Indicative multipliers only. The spread inside a region is often wider than the spread between regions.

Estimated installed cost

$9,000 – $11,000

$1.13 – $1.38 per watt, installed

Base, material and labor: $9,000 – $11,000
Battery storage: $0
Main panel or service upgrade: $0
Roof repair or replacement first: $0
Complex or steep roof: $0
Shading mitigation: $0
Permits and interconnection: $0
Total: $9,000 – $11,000

Materials: $4,500 – $5,500
Labor and overhead: $4,500 – $5,500

How it works

Where this solar cost calculator gets its numbers

One dataset holds the installed cost of each panel type per watt, its expected service life, and the share of that cost which is hardware rather than labor and overhead. One calculation module reads it, and every solar figure on this site comes out of that module: the cost guide tables and this calculator.

Every figure is quoted before incentives, deliberately. The federal credit and state programs change, phase down and carry conditions, and a calculator that bakes them in quietly goes stale. Price the system first; apply this year’s incentives to that number yourself.

Installed cost covers panels, inverter, racking, wiring and labor on a straightforward composition-shingle roof.
A quality tier selects a slice of that panel type’s own range: efficiency, degradation rate, warranty length.
Add-ons are a share of the base cost: battery storage, a panel upgrade or roof work are separate work orders, which is how installers quote them.
Size the system from a year of your own electricity bills, not from the roof. Power you cannot use sells back at wholesale.

What it cannot know

What this solar cost calculator does not know

Every figure here is a national bracket per watt installed. Solar is the project where the site itself moves the answer most.

Your roof and your sun: Orientation, pitch, shading from trees and neighbors, and how much unbroken south-facing plane you actually have. Two identical systems on two different roofs produce meaningfully different power, and production is the whole point.
Your utility’s rules: Net metering terms, interconnection fees and queue times vary by utility and change by rate case. They decide the payback period more than the hardware price does.
This year’s incentives: The federal credit, state programs and local rebates are real money, and they are checked against a date, not a dataset. Verify what applies to you before comparing bids.
The age of your roof: Panels outlive shingles. Putting a 25-year system on a 15-year-old roof means paying to remove and reinstall it mid-life, and the roofing add-on only prices the work it can see today.

Using it well

How to use the estimate against a solar proposal

Solar quotes are written in dollars per watt, and so is this calculator. Divide any bid by the system size in watts before comparing anything else; it is the one number that survives the sales presentation.

A bid well below the range is usually thin-margin hardware from an installer who may not exist when the inverter fails. A bid well above it is paying for a sales commission unless the installer can point at the line items: battery, panel upgrade, complex roof.

Ask every bidder for the production estimate in kilowatt-hours per year and the assumptions behind it. A serious installer models your roof; a lead-generation outfit models your zip code.

For reference

Every solar panel type the calculator prices

The bands the calculator runs on, per watt installed, before any incentive is deducted.

Material	Installed cost per watt, installed	Lifespan	Who it suits
Thin film	$1 – $1.50	10 – 20 years	Cheapest per watt and the least efficient per square foot. It earns its place on outbuildings and RVs, rarely on a house roof.
Monocrystalline, standard	$2.30 – $3.60	25 – 30 years	What almost every residential system is made of. Enough efficiency to fill a normal roof with a normal number of panels.
Monocrystalline, premium	$3 – $4.50	25 – 40 years	More watts from the same roof, and a longer warranty behind them. Worth it when the roof runs out before the demand does.
Ground-mounted array	$3 – $5	25 – 35 years	Racking, footings and a trench instead of a roof. Costs more per watt and lets you point the panels where the sun actually is.
Solar shingles	$5 – $8	25 – 30 years	A roof and an array in one product, at roughly double the price per watt. Buy it for the look, or when a review board forbids panels.

Battery storage is priced separately from every bracket here, and it can approach the cost of the array itself.

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