Will Solar Panels Get Cheaper? Price Trends & Forecast

The Remarkable Price History: 2010–2026

To understand where prices are going, you need to understand how dramatically they've already fallen. The story is one of the most striking cost curves in energy history.

Sources: NREL Residential PV System Cost Benchmarks; EnergySage Marketplace Data 2025–2026; SEIA. Costs are national averages before incentives. Regional variation is 20–30% above or below these figures.

The pattern is unmistakable: the most dramatic declines happened between 2010 and 2016, when Chinese panel manufacturing scaled exponentially. By the time you reach 2020–2026, the annual decline has compressed to roughly 2% per year for the all-in installed cost.

Per the EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2025, the utility-scale solar module spot price hit a record low of under $0.20/W in 2025, but residential installed costs haven't tracked that trajectory, because labor, hardware balance-of-system components, permitting, and installer margins make up the majority of your bill.

Why Solar Got So Cheap So Fast

Solar followed what economists call Swanson's Law, a pattern where solar panel costs drop approximately 20% for every doubling of global cumulative shipments. This is analogous to Moore's Law in semiconductors, and it drove the stunning 2010–2020 price collapse.

Several specific factors drove the decline:

• Chinese manufacturing scale: China's solar panel output grew from under 1 GW in 2007 to over 400 GW per year in 2024, creating economies of scale that crushed global panel prices. The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) reports that imported crystalline silicon modules represent the majority of US residential installations.
• Cell efficiency improvements: Monocrystalline PERC cells, then TOPCon and heterojunction cells, pushed efficiency from 14–16% in 2010 to 21–24% in 2026, meaning fewer panels (and less labor) achieve the same output.
• Larger wafer sizes: The industry shift from M2 wafers to M10 and M12 wafers increased power output per panel from 250–300W to 400–450W, reducing per-watt manufacturing costs by 10–15%.
• Installation workforce maturity: The residential solar installation workforce has grown significantly, and standardized racking systems and permit automation have reduced soft costs, which the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory tracks as "installed cost not attributable to hardware."

These are largely one-time improvements. The wafer size transition is complete. Manufacturing automation has matured. The gains that drove 15–20%/year declines are behind us.

Why the Decline Is Slowing

Here's the part most solar cost articles gloss over: panels are now a minority of what you're paying for. According to NREL's 2025 Residential PV Cost Benchmark, the hardware breakdown for a typical residential install looks like this:

Source: NREL Residential PV System Cost Benchmarks 2025; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory "Tracking the Sun" report.

When panels are 25–30% of total cost, a 10% panel price drop translates to only a 2.5–3% reduction in your total bill. Labor, permitting, and sales overhead are not subject to the same manufacturing scale economies as panels, and in many markets they're rising with general wage inflation.

This structural shift is the core reason why residential installed costs have barely moved since 2021, even as module spot prices hit all-time lows. The cheap hardware savings are being absorbed by other cost categories that aren't falling.

Price Forecast: What NREL and SEIA Project Through 2030

NREL's Annual Technology Baseline (ATB) projects residential solar installed costs declining by approximately 2–4% per year through 2030 under moderate technology assumptions. Their optimistic scenario includes faster permitting reform, advanced manufacturing subsidies, and faster efficiency gains, but even that scenario produces only a 5–6% annual decline, not the 15–20% drops of the early 2010s.

Projections derived from NREL Annual Technology Baseline 2025 residential PV cost assumptions. Figures represent median installed cost before incentives. Actual results vary significantly by region.

In dollar terms for a typical 8 kW system, waiting two years saves you roughly $1,440–$2,880 on the hardware cost in the moderate scenario. That sounds meaningful, but only if you ignore what you're giving up.

Technology on the Horizon

Perovskite-silicon tandem cells, which NREL researchers have pushed past 33% efficiency in laboratory settings, could dramatically reshape the cost curve if they achieve commercialization. Several manufacturers (Oxford PV, LONGi, and others) are targeting commercial production in the 2027–2029 timeframe, but moving from a research cell to a warranty-backed rooftop product typically takes 5–8 years after lab records. Per NREL's own technology roadmaps, widespread residential availability before 2030 is unlikely.

Don't wait for perovskite. It's coming, but not on a timeline that should delay a 2026 purchase decision.

Should You Wait? The Math of Delaying Solar

This is the question at the heart of this article, so let's run the actual numbers. We'll use a homeowner in Massachusetts paying 30¢/kWh and considering an 8 kW system that would produce approximately 10,500 kWh/year.

The calculus is less lopsided in low-rate states. In Louisiana at 13.49¢/kWh (EIA, June 2026), two years of foregone savings on the same 10,500 kWh would be about $2,833, still more than the $1,440 hardware saving, but the margin is much thinner. In those same low-rate states, solar already has marginal ROI, see the solar payback period by state before deciding whether to buy in 2026 or 2028.

Cost of waiting one year: electricity you keep buying (8,000 kWh at June 2026 rates)

This is the number to compare with any expected hardware price drop. It prices 8,000 kWh, roughly a year of output from a 6 kW array, at each state's EIA residential rate for June 2026, i.e. the grid electricity you continue to buy for every year you wait. Against this page's moderate scenario (3%/yr on a $24,000 system, about $720 a year), no state's June 2026 average is low enough for waiting to win on price alone.

Source: EIA Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, residential average price, June 2026 (data period 2026-06). Energy charge only; fixed customer charges, taxes and riders are extra. Cost of waiting = 8,000 kWh × rate; assumes the solar output would have displaced grid purchases at the retail rate. Compare with the expected hardware price decline, not with the full system price.

If the upfront cost is the real obstacle rather than the price trend, a solar PPA shifts the hardware-price bet to the provider, who can still claim the Section 48E credit on third-party-owned systems in 2026, at the cost of never owning the system. And check what those rates mean on a whole bill in the average electric bill by state.

There's a second consideration the math above doesn't capture: electricity rate escalation. Per EIA data, US residential electricity rates rose approximately 32% from 2015 to 2025. Every month you wait is a month you pay that escalating rate rather than offsetting it with free solar electricity. The system you install in 2028 will start with a slightly higher savings rate than the 2026 system, but it still had to pay two years of escalating bills to get there.

Use the solar payback calculator to run your specific numbers with your current electricity rate.

The Tariff Wildcard: Trade Policy and Solar Costs

One major variable the NREL cost forecasts don't fully account for is US trade policy. Solar panel imports have been subject to various tariff regimes since 2012, and the political environment around them is volatile.

Current tariff structures include Section 201 safeguard tariffs (first imposed in 2018) and anti-dumping/countervailing duties on panels from specific manufacturing jurisdictions. The Biden administration's IRA created domestic manufacturing incentives to build US panel production, but as of 2026, the US still imports the majority of its crystalline silicon modules.

Tariff policy creates both upside and downside price risk:

• Upside scenario: Tariff relief or policy changes could reduce imported panel costs, accelerating the 2–4%/year decline projection
• Downside scenario: Expanded tariffs or trade restrictions could partially offset manufacturing cost reductions, keeping installed prices flat or even increasing them

The practical implication: future solar prices are somewhat unpredictable in ways that cut both directions. Expecting prices to be meaningfully lower in 2028 is a bet on manufacturing trends continuing to outpace soft cost increases and trade policy headwinds, a reasonable bet, but not a certainty.

What Drives Your Installed Cost: And What You Can Control

Rather than waiting for macro trends, homeowners have more control over their actual installed cost than they typically realize. The installer and quote process matters enormously:

• Get 3+ quotes. Per EnergySage marketplace data, homeowners who get 3+ quotes save an average of 10% versus those who get only one. On a $24,000 system, that's $2,400, more than NREL projects prices will fall over the next two years.
• Consider installer size carefully. National installers (Sunrun, Freedom Forever) have higher marketing overhead built into pricing, often 20–30% above local installers for the same equipment. Local and regional installers typically offer better per-watt pricing.
• Don't oversize your system. Installers often quote larger systems because margins are per-watt. A system sized to 100% of your current consumption (rather than 110–120%) will have a shorter payback period and better ROI.
• Understand your state incentives. Many state programs have funding caps and waitlists, Massachusetts SMART, New Jersey SREC-II, and New York NY-Sun have all had periods where they ran out of capacity. Acting sooner may mean you qualify; waiting may mean a program fills up.

Check current solar incentives by state to see what programs are currently accepting applications in your area.

Verdict: Buy Now or Wait?

My recommendation after working through this data:

For homeowners in high-rate states with suitable roofs, every month of delay is a month of full retail electricity rates. The math almost never supports waiting for cheaper panels over the savings you forgo. The exception is in genuinely low-rate markets, where even today's pricing doesn't produce a compelling return, and cheaper panels in 2028 won't change that fundamental.

Solar panels will almost certainly get somewhat cheaper. But not fast enough, in most scenarios, to justify paying full electricity rates for another two years to capture the savings.

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