Solar / Guides

Is solar worth it in 2026?

On a $200-a-month bill, yes — in all 11 states we publish, rooftop solar returns more over 25 years than it costs, even with no federal credit for buyers. But "yes" covers a range of more than two to one: payback runs from 5.7 yr in New York to 13.4 yr in Arizona.

What decides where you land is not how sunny it is. It is the price of the electricity you stop buying, the rule that says what your exports are worth, and whether your state pays anything. The sunniest state on this site has one of the longest paybacks — and that is the most useful thing this page can tell you.

What actually decides it

A solar system earns in two ways: the electricity you use yourself, worth whatever your utility charges, and the electricity you export, worth whatever your state's rule says. Sunshine sets how many kilowatt-hours there are; those two prices set what each one is worth. Across the 11 states we publish, this is how strongly each input tracks payback:

That last line is not a claim that sunshine hurts. More production is always better, all else equal — and here all else is not equal: the sunnier states in this set are also the ones with cheap electricity and, lately, with export rules that pay well below retail. Sunshine is the input people choose a state on, and in this set it is the one that predicts the answer worst.

So treat the correlation as the hook, not the proof. The evidence is in the next section, where nothing is sampled at all: one input moves at a time on a single house, and the mechanism is visible. That argument holds no matter which states we happen to publish.

Every state we publish, ranked

The same $200-a-month bill in every state we publish, paid in cash, 2026 policy, at competitive quoted prices. The chart puts the sunniest state at the top; the payback bars do not follow it.

Where the answer is a clear yes: New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Florida —eight states inside ten years. Where it is a slower yes: Connecticut, Texas, Arizona, at 10.3 yr to 13.4 yr: still ahead over the life of the system, but you are lending the money for a decade or more first. No state we publish shows a negative 25-year result at this bill.

What would have to change for the slow ones to become fast is specific, not vague. For Arizona it is the export rule and the rate; the next section takes it apart.

The Arizona lesson: sunshine is not the answer

Arizona gets 1755 kWh per kW of panels each year, the most of any state on this site and 36% more than New York. It has the longest payback: 13.4 yr against New York's 5.7 yr. The panels are not the problem — they produce more. What each kilowatt-hour is worth is the problem.

Hold everything about Arizona constant and change one input at a time:

• Give it New York's export rule — full retail instead of 37% — and payback falls from 13.4 yr to 7.7 yr. One line in a tariff is worth 6 years.
• Give it New York's electricity price — 29.9¢ instead of 15.38¢ — and payback falls to 6.4 yr, with the same panels and the same sun.
• Give it more sun. There is none to give: it already has the most on this site, and it is still last.

This is why a national "solar payback map" shaded by irradiance is misleading. The map you want is shaded by the retail rate and the export rule — which is what the payback page ranks, and what the table above shows.

How small a bill is too small

A small bill buys a small system, and some costs do not shrink with it: $150 a year of maintenance, a $1,800 inverter in year 12, and a $12-a-month utility charge that solar does not remove. Ask the engine for the lowest bill at which the sums still come out positive and it answers $29 to $50 a month — and that answer should not be published on its own, because of what it implies you would buy:

The middle column is why. At those bills the correctly sized system is 0.54 to 1.51 kW — two to four panels — and no installer sells one. LBNL's survey of American installations puts the median residential system at 7.4 kW, with four in five between 5 and 11 kW. A number that is arithmetically true and impossible to buy is not an answer, so the column to read is the fourth: the bill at which you would naturally want the smallest system anyone routinely installs. That runs from $110 a month to $250.Size distribution: LBNL Tracking the Sun, 2024 edition, systems installed in 2023, read 2026-09-06.

What a smaller bill actually costs you

A smaller bill does not stop solar working; it makes the fixed costs a larger share of a smaller system, so the return arrives more slowly. Every system below is sized to its own household's use — the range where these figures hold, for reasons set out under the table:

This is the smaller, true version of a claim it is tempting to overstate. Where the economics are strong, the bill barely matters: in Massachusetts the difference between a $75 and a $300 bill is 0.3 of a year. Where they are marginal, it matters a great deal: California moves 8 years across the same range. The states in the second group are the low-export, cheap-power ones — the same division as everywhere else on this page. Your state still matters more than your bill, but the two interact: a small bill is most costly exactly where solar was already marginal.

A year-end surplus is settled at a lower rate

In-year credits and the year-end balance are not the same thing.New Jersey settles it at the wholesale. Maryland settles it at the commodity portion. Pennsylvania settles it at the price to compare. For California, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, Texas, Arizona, Florida we have not read the year-end rule from a primary source, so nothing is modelled for it and no figure here asserts one.New Jersey, read 2026-09-06. Maryland, read 2026-09-06. Pennsylvania, read 2026-09-06.

The system may not be approved at all

In New Jersey, the generating capacity of a system cannot exceed the customer's annual electric needs — so a household with a small bill cannot have a large system approved, whatever the sums say. Pennsylvania, by contrast, ties eligibility to a nameplate limit alone and tests nothing against consumption. Where we have not read the rule, it is not on file.New Jersey, read 2026-09-06.

So this page does not tell you what happens if you buy a system much larger than your house needs. The model would flatter it — it would credit the whole surplus at the in-year export rate — and in at least one of these states you could not buy it anyway. That is outside the range we publish, and it stays outside until the year-end rules are read for every state.

What would change the answer

Four things would move it, and three of them are outside your control. Figures below are the featured house —9.58 kW in Austin, Texas, on a $200-a-month bill — with one input changed at a time.

The rate escalation is the big one, and it is an assumption, not a fact: at 0% a year the 25-year net on this house falls by $15,584. It is a slider in the calculator for exactly that reason — move it to whatever you believe and read the answer off the chart.

A state incentive ending is the fourth, and it only bites where there is one to lose:

• Illinois: payback would go from 8.5 yr to 16.9 yr, 8.4 years longer.
• New York: payback would go from 5.7 yr to 7.4 yr, 1.7 years longer.
• New Jersey: payback would go from 6.1 yr to 7.8 yr, 1.7 years longer.
• Arizona: payback would go from 13.4 yr to 14 yr, 0.6 years longer.
• Massachusetts: payback would go from 6.9 yr to 7.3 yr, 0.4 years longer.

Every incentive on this site is read from the statute, tax department or programme that grants it, with the date it was read —the list, with sources. None is assumed to last forever.

How to check your own case

1. Start from your bill, not your roof. Put your monthly bill and state into the calculator; it runs the same engine as this page and shows the export rule and rate it used.
2. Check which price you are being quoted. Installed price is the biggest lever you control, and quoted prices and typical reported prices differ by about 60% — what solar costs.
3. Move the escalation slider to what you believe. If you would not bet on electricity prices rising, set it to zero and see whether the answer still holds.
4. Read your own state's page. All 11 of them carry the export rule, the incentive and the sources behind both.
5. Then decide how to pay. Lease, loan or cash — the gap between them is larger than the gap between most states.

Questions

Is solar worth it in 2026 without the federal tax credit?

On a $200-a-month bill it still returns more than it costs over 25 years in all 11 states we publish, but it takes longer than it did: payback runs from 5.7 yr in New York to 13.4 yr in Arizona, and 8 of the 11 are inside ten years. A buyer's federal credit in 2026 is 0% — 25D unavailable for property placed in service after 2025-12-31 (One Big Beautiful Bill Act).

What decides whether solar is worth it where I live?

Three things, in this order: the electricity rate you avoid, the rule that says what your exports are credited at, and whether your state pays an incentive. Across the 11 states we publish, payback correlates -0.64 with the retail rate and -0.5 with the export ratio — both negative, meaning a higher rate and a better export rule mean a faster payback. It correlates +0.66 with sunshine, which is the wrong sign. Those eleven states were chosen rather than sampled, so that figure describes this set and not the country; the causal test is on the page, where one input is moved at a time on a single house and the mechanism is visible.

Is solar worth it in a sunny state like Arizona?

Arizona is the sunniest state on this site — 1755 kWh per kW a year, 36% more than New York — and has the longest payback, 13.4 yr against 5.7 yr. Two inputs explain it: Arizona's electricity costs 15.38¢/kWh against New York's 29.9¢, so each avoided kilowatt-hour is worth about half as much, and its exports are credited at 37% of retail rather than 100%. Give Arizona full-retail export credit and nothing else changes: payback falls to 7.7 yr.

How big does my electricity bill need to be for solar to make sense?

The arithmetic breaks even from about $29 to $50 a month, but that answer is useless: at those bills the right-sized system is 0.54 to 1.51 kW — two to four panels — and no installer sells that. The size four in five American systems exceed is 5 kW, and the bill that naturally calls for 5 kW runs from $110 to $250 a month depending on the state. A smaller bill does not stop solar working, it just slows the return: across $75 to $300 a month, payback moves by 0.3 of a year in Massachusetts and 8 years in California. We do not publish figures for a system deliberately larger than the household uses: the model has no annual ceiling on export credits, and several states settle a year-end surplus at a lower rate than the in-year one.

Is solar a good investment?

Judged as one: on a $200 bill, a cash purchase returns 117.8% to 434.1% over 25 years across these states, and the internal rate of return is on each state page. It is an unusual investment: the return is a bill you stop paying, so it is effectively tax-free and it rises with electricity prices. It is also illiquid and tied to one roof.

What if electricity prices stop rising?

That is the single most contested assumption in any solar calculator, and the model exposes it as a slider. On the featured house, at the default 2.5% a year, payback is 12 yr and the 25-year net $32,341. If prices never rise again: 14.1 yr and $16,757. At 5% a year: 10 yr and $55,344.

Would a new federal credit change the answer?

Materially. The same house under 2025 policy, when the credit was 30%, pays back in 8.1 yr instead of 12 yr and returns $38,721 instead of $32,341. Nothing else differs between those two runs.

Should I buy or lease?

Buying returns more in every state we publish; a lease costs nothing up front and the provider keeps the 30% federal credit it can still claim. The lease-vs-buy page runs all three ways of paying on the same house, and in some states with poor export rules the modelled lease loses money.

This is general information computed from published data and statute, each cited with the date it was read. It is a screening estimate, not a quote, and not financial or tax advice: confirm the figures against real quotes and with a professional before you rely on them.

Published 5 September 2026. Data last verified 14 October 2026. About the author.