this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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I just had another solar installer come by. Like usual, they refused to show me a fucking itemized bill of the total install cost. The math they presented was utter horseshit. But when I read between the lines, I was able to come out with a $3.50/W installed price (6KW system for ~$21k) and that let me do some calculations. In their idealized, guaranteed, projections the system would pay for itself after 7 or so years. Not the worst, tbh.

Anyways I think $3.50/W installed is... high. The panels are now bought in bulk for less than $0.3/W. Of course there's the interconnection, inverters, wiring, panel mounts and brackets, labor, and profit.

But on my home with a projected 6KW system that comes to $1.8k in panels leaving $20k for the rest. I've got a feeling that will come down by necessity once the tax credit goes away.

Does anyone work for an installer? Where is all of that money going?

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[–] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 4 points 13 hours ago

I work for an installer. Sometimes our company does installs on our employees houses where we don't charge for labor, just materials at cost. It's a sweet deal. Today I was part of such an install, and a dozen Hanwa 410 Qcells, each with a microinverter, were put on a roof. This cost our employee about $6000. So that's about $1.21 a watt with all the necessary equipment.

Unfortunatly I don't know how much we would charge a normal customer. It would probably be double that. All I know is we aren't the cheapest player in the market.

Where does the extra money go? Most installers at our company get paid between 19 and 25 an hour. There's the warehouse expenses, but that's divided between a lot of installs. There's the office staff, but that cost is also divided between many installs.

Things our company does others don't: Our sales people don't earn comission, we don't do door to door sales, don't advertise in a serious way, our CEO earns less than 70K, profits are shared with all employees, and it's a co-op, so you could buy in and get an even larger profit share.

Other companies are probably doing all these things we're not doing and passing that cost on to the customer.

There do exist companies that will sell you equipment packages at wholesale prices, or so I've been told, but you'll need to get the permits and install it yourself.

[–] Thorry@feddit.org 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

$21K for 6KW? Holy shit....

I had a 3KW system installed in 2022, total costs were around $3.5K (including some changes to my electrical setup to fit it in). Looking up current pricing around here, the same setup would be cheaper still.

6KW is obviously bigger and your situation may be more complex, but anything above $10K seems like a ripoff for me.

[–] MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Reads to me like someone paid electrician rates for every hour of labor involved. Much cheaper to do most of the work yourself and then have it inspected, or even then pay to have it fixed/brought-up-to-code/whatever.

Personally, I'm going the DIY route partially because I want it designed for inspection and servicability to a degree most installers would never accomodate, and certainly not for less than, say, 5x what it would cost to impliment myself.

[–] Thorry@feddit.org 5 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Looked up the invoice for you (rounded the numbers for simplicity):

Panels (8x) including micro inverters, all of the mounting hardware, cables etc. - $2500 Hardware for upgrading the electrical panel - $400 Labour, various items, delivery costs - $600

IIRC it was 3 dudes for about half a day. Two dudes for the panels and an electrician that checked what the panel dudes did on the roof and upgraded my electrical panel.

I felt like it was a pretty good deal. Panels could have been cheaper, but I wanted the full black ones. And a single inverter would have been cheaper than micro inverters, but the panels are partly shaded a lot of the time due to a tree. Calculations I did showed the extra price of the micro inverters would be worth it to get the most out of the panels.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 8 points 22 hours ago

The U.S. has inflated solar costs compared to other countries. Even then, that's a high cost per watt.

Most advice I've seen suggested that any quote above $3 a watt pre-subsidy is overpriced in the U.S. unless you live in a HCOL area.

It's hard to say how much prices will come down after the subsidy is gone.

[–] heyWhatsay@slrpnk.net 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

If you want to save money on DIY, find used panels, I have found used panels, from large systems that are swapping out, sometimes going for $20 each. Check Craigslist and marketplace

[–] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

But also figure out what you may need to do in the legal/regulatory departments because most populated places don't let you just go wild with a solar install. Aside from regular permits and licensed contractors being involved, my utility requires the system be sized so it's annual output matches annual consumption. They'll do credits in summer to pay for winter, but won't pay homeowners for outright excess anymore - won't even let you connect to the grid.

Offgrid, have at it. Still probably pertinent building permits and fire codes to consider if you're in a dense enough area to find used panels.

NET price, the price you or I pay? Not at all. Gross/Wholesale? Maybe.