ANALYSIS: Solar Panel Prices have dropped sharply since 2016

Solar Panel Prices Have Dropped Off Cliff & Sunk Into Ocean — Solar Panels 9× Cheaper Than In 2006 CleanTechnica

by Zachary Shahan 

I used to write articles about solar power every day — for years. When you’re in the thick of it, you get more and more focused on details and get increasingly busy with industry conversations that are foreign, if not confusing, to outsiders. I tried to keep that in mind and tried to regularly consider what would be useful for “normal people” to read about solar power. One topic I repeatedly came back to was: solar panel prices keep dropping, and solar’s probably cheaper than you think.

For the past few years or so, I’ve been much more focused on electric vehicles, and I increasingly feel like an “outsider” in the solar industry. I’m not always up to date with the hottest topic of debate or discussion among solar policy wonks or solar industry analysts. One result in recent months is that this news has seemingly come out of nowhere: solar power prices have dropped more than I realized.

First of all, when Tesla rolled out $1.49/watt rooftop solar panels ($2/watt if you don’t count federal subsidies), I was quite surprised to see it so low. That’s a terrifically low price for rooftop solar panels. The savings from going solar should save many homeowners thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of their solar power systems*.

The second big catalyst came earlier today (or yesterday, technically), when we published an update from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showing that the price of solar panels alone (not including the installation cost) dropped nearly 9 times over since 2006. As one commenter highlighted, they have “decreased from $3.50 per peak watt in 2006 to $0.40 per peak watt in 2019. … The Chinese broke the log jam.” That’s a stunning drop that means going solar today is wickedly cheap, even compared to a few years ago.