The National Trend, and a Meaningfully Higher LBNL Number
EnergySage’s marketplace data, aggregated from actual quotes exchanged on its platform, puts the 2026 national average residential solar price at approximately $2.60 per watt before incentives, down from $3.16 per watt ten years ago, roughly an 18% decline in nominal terms. This site’s own solar market statistics page, pulled from the same EnergySage source on an earlier date, cites a broader $2.58 to $2.95 per watt range; EnergySage’s marketplace tool updates continuously, so the specific point figure a given pull returns can shift within that range even when citing the identical page. That is a real-transaction figure, not a survey estimate, but it is not the only credible number in the market. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s most recent data, cited by EnergySage rather than pulled directly from LBNL’s own site, puts the national median cash-purchase price at $3.50 per watt, nearly a dollar higher. The gap likely comes down to sample composition: EnergySage’s own platform average is drawn from homeowners actively quote-shopping across installers, a group that tends to land more competitive pricing than the broader market LBNL’s dataset captures.
Price per watt is a different number from customer acquisition cost per watt, a separate 2026 figure this site tracks elsewhere: acquisition cost is projected to spike 40% to $0.84 per watt in 2026, a cost layered on top of, not included in, the hardware and installation price above.
Why Price Per Watt Varies So Much by State
EnergySage’s state-level data shows Arizona posting the lowest average at $2.20 per watt, with Alabama highest at $3.84 and Tennessee close behind at $3.35. On a national 12 kilowatt system, EnergySage’s own state table shows total system costs ranging from roughly $21,967, the lowest total shown, in California, to $54,992, the highest, in Alabama, against a $31,135 national average. That total-cost range is a separate ranking from the per-watt spread above; a state’s average system size, not just its price per watt, factors into where it lands on the total-cost table.
The Numbers
The 2026 national average residential solar price is approximately $2.60 per watt before incentives, down from $3.16 per watt ten years ago, roughly an 18% decline in nominal terms.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s most recent data, cited by EnergySage, puts the national median cash-purchase price at $3.50 per watt, nearly $1 higher than EnergySage’s own platform average.
Arizona posts the lowest state average price at $2.20 per watt; Alabama posts the highest at $3.84 per watt, with Tennessee second-highest at $3.35 per watt.
For a national 12kW system, total system cost ranges from roughly $21,967 (California, lowest total shown) to $54,992 (Alabama, highest), against a $31,135 national average.
Customer acquisition cost, a separate figure layered on top of panel and install price, is projected to spike 40% to $0.84 per watt in 2026, up from a five-year low of $0.60 per watt in 2025.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.