What solar actually costs, and why nobody will tell you online

Every solar site you land on either refuses to discuss price or shows you a national average that has nothing to do with your house. We are not going to publish a number here either, and we would rather explain why than pretend.

Why a number on a web page would be dishonest

Two houses on the same street can differ by a large factor in cost per usable kilowatt-hour. Not because anyone is being marked up differently, but because the work is different:

• Roof orientation and tilt change how much energy the same equipment produces.
• Shading can make half a roof worth building on and the other half worth skipping.
• Roof material and condition change attachment, flashing, and labor. Standing seam metal, asphalt shingle, and a roof that should be replaced first are three different jobs.
• Electrical service matters. Panel capacity, main breaker size, and where the meter sits can add a service upgrade or add nothing.
• Distance and obstruction between the array and the point of interconnection.
• Battery, or no battery. Storage roughly changes the shape of the whole project.
• Utility and interconnection requirements, which differ between Consumers Energy and a cooperative like Great Lakes Energy.

A price per watt is a useful way for installers to talk to each other. It is a poor way to tell a homeowner what their project costs, because it silently assumes all of the above.

What actually determines your number

In rough order of impact:

1. System size, which is set by your consumption and capped by Michigan’s distributed generation rules.
2. Equipment. Module wattage and inverter architecture. Microinverters cost more than a string inverter and buy you per-module monitoring and better shade tolerance.
3. Mounting. Roof mount is usually cheapest. Ground mount adds foundation and trenching.
4. Electrical work, including any service upgrade.
5. Storage, if you want backup power.

How to compare two bids

If you are getting multiple quotes, and you should, these are the questions that make them comparable:

• What is the equipment, by make and model? Module and inverter, specifically. “Tier 1 panels” is not an answer.
• What is the modeled annual production in kWh, and what did you model it against? Then compare that to your actual annual usage. A bid claiming much higher production from the same size array on the same roof is not better, it is more optimistic.
• Is the price before or after any credit? For a residential system in 2026, there is no federal credit.
• What is included? Permits, interconnection application, inspection, monitoring, and who handles them.
• What is the workmanship warranty, separate from the manufacturer warranty? And who honors it.
• Cash price versus financed price. If a financed price is higher, the difference is a dealer fee. That is normal. It should be visible.

What we do instead of a price list

Send us twelve months of usage. We model your roof, size the system to your consumption, and come back with the equipment list, the expected annual production, and the price. Then you can compare that against anyone else’s bid on equal terms.

If the answer is that solar does not make sense on your roof, we will tell you that, and it will not cost you anything to have found out.