Solar panel buying guide 2026: what to check before you sign

Buying solar in 2026 comes down to five checks: a price per watt inside the current market range, a system sized to your real usage, warranties that outlive the company selling them, financing with no hidden dealer fee, and a contract you can still cancel. The panels themselves are the easy part. What separates a good deal from a bad one this year is mostly the paperwork around them.

That’s a bigger deal than it was a year ago. The 30% federal credit for homeowners ended with 2025, residential installs fell to a five-year low in the second quarter of 2026 (995 MW, down 12% from a year earlier, per SEIA and Wood Mackenzie), and the second-largest installer in the country filed for bankruptcy in April. A shrinking market means hungrier sales teams and more companies that may not be around in year eight, when your inverter acts up.

The quick checklist

Bring this list to every quote:

• Price: an all-in cash price, and the same price divided by system watts. Compare $/W, not monthly payments.
• Size: system kW and estimated annual kWh, with the shading and orientation assumptions written down.
• Equipment: exact panel, inverter, and battery model numbers, not “Tier 1 panels.”
• Warranties: product, performance, and workmanship, and the name of whoever backs each one.
• Financing: the cash price next to the financed price. The difference is the dealer fee.
• Export rules: which net metering or net billing plan you’ll be on, and what an exported kWh earns.
• Exit: the cancellation window and how to use it.

What a fair price looks like in 2026

Three credible sources measure solar prices, and they disagree on purpose because they measure different things.

The EnergySage number is what shoppers who collect several bids tend to see. The SEIA number includes the full cost structure of the average installer, so it runs higher. And the LBNL gap between cash and loan prices is the most useful row in the table: on the same kind of system, financed deals were reported far above cash deals, partly because loan origination fees get folded into the price.

So, as a working rule for a typical home without a battery, a cash quote between roughly $2.50 and $3.40 per watt is normal in 2026. Below that, ask what’s missing (permits, a monitoring system, a real roof inspection). Above it, ask what’s included. A battery, a main electrical panel upgrade, a tile roof, or a long wire run to a detached garage can all justify more. A “premium brand” alone usually doesn’t.

For a 7.7 kW system (the median residential size in LBNL’s 2025 data), that range works out to about $19,000 to $26,000 before state incentives. Run your own bill through the solar savings calculator to see what size you actually need, and check your state’s typical $/W in the solar cost by state guides.

Batteries are priced separately. EnergySage’s H1 2026 data put storage at a median of $1,130 per kWh of capacity, up from $1,074 six months earlier, so a 13.5 kWh battery adds roughly $15,000. Whether that pays off depends almost entirely on your utility’s export rules; the solar battery guide works through it.

Will prices drop if you wait?

Probably not by much, and the direction isn’t clear. Module prices for home-scale systems fell about 16% year over year by Q2 2026 after the IEEPA tariffs were struck down, yet SEIA’s residential system price fell only 1.4%, because logistics and Section 232 metal tariffs pushed up the cost of everything else.

Two new trade measures land late in 2026. A Section 232 tariff on polysilicon and its derivatives, with a 15% duty plus minimum import prices for modules and cells, takes effect on December 4, 2026. Final anti-dumping and countervailing duty orders on cells and modules from India, Indonesia, and Laos were scheduled for early November 2026. Neither guarantees a price jump for homeowners, but neither points to cheaper panels either.

Waiting can make sense for other reasons: your roof needs replacing in the next few years, you’re about to move, or your utility is changing its export rules and you want to see the final tariff. Waiting for a better $/W is a weaker reason in 2026 than it was in 2023.

Sizing: what the quote should show

A quote should start from your usage, not from your roof. Ask for the last 12 months of kWh from your utility bills and check that the proposal’s estimated annual production is close to the share you want to cover.

The common mistake runs in one direction: oversizing. Under full retail net metering, a slightly oversized system costs you little. Under net billing, which now covers new customers in California and in APS and TEP territory in Arizona, every extra kWh you export earns a fraction of what you pay for power. In California, exports under the Net Billing Tariff average roughly a quarter of the retail rate. There, a system sized to your daytime use, plus a battery if the numbers work, usually beats a big array.

Ask each installer three sizing questions:

1. What annual kWh did you assume I use, and where did that number come from?
2. What production loss did you assume for shading and orientation?
3. How much of the output do you expect me to export, and at what credit per kWh?

If two quotes for your house differ by more than 15% in estimated production for the same size, one of them is guessing. The how many solar panels guide shows how to check the math yourself.

Equipment: what matters and what’s marketing

Panels. Nearly every mainstream residential panel sold in 2026 uses TOPCon, heterojunction, or back-contact cells, with efficiencies around 21% to 25%. The panels installed most often now sit in the 430 to 460 W range. Higher efficiency matters when roof space is short. On a large, unshaded roof, a 22% panel and a 24% panel produce nearly the same bill savings, and the cheaper one usually wins.

What matters more than the efficiency line is the performance warranty: what share of original output the manufacturer guarantees after 25 or 30 years, and the annual degradation rate. For newer n-type panels, many manufacturers guarantee 90% or more of output at 25 to 30 years. Read the warranty document itself; distributor summaries are often out of date.

Inverters. String inverters are cheapest and fine for a simple, unshaded roof. Microinverters and DC optimizers handle shade and multiple roof planes better and add panel-level monitoring, at extra cost. LBNL’s 2026 data shows panel-level electronics losing share in 2025 as more systems paired with batteries that include their own inverter. Ask how long the inverter warranty runs; it’s often the first component to need replacing.

Batteries. Check the warranted capacity, not just the years. Tesla’s US Powerwall warranty, for example, covers 10 years with 70% of capacity retained at the end of that period (subject to a throughput limit). A battery warranty that guarantees more capacity is worth something; one that’s silent on capacity isn’t much of a warranty.

One manufacturer caution. Maxeon, formerly SunPower’s panel maker and known for a 40-year warranty, applied for judicial management in Singapore in April 2026. If a quote leans on an unusually long warranty, ask what happens if the manufacturer restructures, and give that warranty less weight than its length suggests.

Warranties that survive a bankrupt installer

Here’s the part most buying guides skip, and the one that cost real homeowners money over the past 18 months.

Your system carries two kinds of warranty. Manufacturer warranties (panels, inverter, battery) come from the companies that made the hardware, and generally remain valid if your installer disappears. The workmanship warranty (roof penetrations, wiring, leaks, the installer’s own mistakes) comes from the installer. If the installer goes bankrupt, that promise typically becomes an unsecured claim in court, paid last or not at all.

That isn’t hypothetical. Sunnova and the lender Mosaic both filed for Chapter 11 in June 2025, and their customer accounts and loan servicing moved to other companies. Freedom Forever, which held about 6% of the US residential market in 2025, filed for Chapter 11 in April 2026 after exiting ten states.

Before you sign, ask:

• Who backs the workmanship warranty, and is it insured by a third party?
• How long has the installer been operating under its current name? (A company that has changed its name more than once deserves extra questions.)
• If you go out of business, who services my system and honors the production guarantee?

A local installer with ten years of history and a modest warranty can be a safer bet than a national brand promising 25 years of coverage it may not be around to honor.

Financing: find the hidden dealer fee

Many solar loans advertise a low APR. The catch is that the lender pays for that rate by charging the installer a “dealer fee,” and the installer raises the system price to cover it. The CFPB found that these fees can add 30% or more to the loan principal compared with the cash price, and they don’t show up in the APR.

The fix is simple. Ask every installer for two numbers in writing: the cash price and the total amount you’ll borrow. If a $22,000 cash system becomes a $29,000 loan, that $7,000 is the fee, before any interest.

Then compare the loan to alternatives you control: a home equity line, a credit union loan, or paying part in cash. And in 2026 specifically, reject any loan pitched with “your net cost after the 30% credit.” That credit doesn’t exist for owned systems installed this year. The CFPB flagged the same sales tactic back when the credit was real, and it’s simply false now. The loan vs lease vs cash guide runs the full comparison.

Leases and PPAs in 2026

Leases and power purchase agreements are where the federal subsidy went. The company that owns the panels on your roof can still claim a commercial clean-energy credit that homeowners lost, and some of that value can come back to you as a lower monthly payment. EnergySage reported that the share of installers quoting leases and PPAs on its platform roughly tripled in six months, to about 41%.

That can be a reasonable deal, but read four lines of the contract closely: the annual payment escalator, what happens when you sell the house, who keeps any renewable energy credits, and the buyout price. The federal solar tax credit guide explains what changed and what third-party owners can still claim.

Red flags that should end the conversation

• “Free solar” or a “government solar program.” The FTC warns that there’s no free solar. Those pitches are almost always leases or PPAs, sometimes sold by people pretending to represent your utility or the government.
• A 30% federal credit on a 2026 cash or loan purchase. It’s either outdated material or a deliberate misstatement.
• Pressure to sign the same day, or a “price that expires tonight.”
• No site visit or roof inspection before a final price.
• A large deposit before permits are approved. Payment schedules should follow milestones such as permit approval, installation, and passing inspection.
• A quote with no equipment model numbers.
• Production estimates that look too good: savings that assume every exported kWh earns your full retail rate in a net billing state.

Your rights after you sign

The FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule gives you three business days to cancel most sales made in your home. Some states add more. Texas gives five business days for residential solar contracts signed since September 1, 2025, and since September 1, 2026, solar sellers there must register with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. In California, customers of the major utilities must receive and sign the CPUC’s Solar Consumer Protection Guide before the contract is final.

Separately from cancellation rights, check that the installer holds the license your state requires (an electrical or solar contractor license, depending on the state). NABCEP certification is a useful sign of training, but it doesn’t replace a state license. If a sale goes wrong, report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and to your state attorney general.

Where to start

Start with your own numbers before you call anyone. Pull a year of electric bills, enter your average monthly bill and state into the solar savings calculator, and note the system size and payback it suggests. Then check what your state still offers in the incentives by state guides, and read whether solar is worth it where you live.

With those three numbers in hand (a target size, a fair $/W range, and your local export rules), the quotes become much easier to judge.