How Much Does It Cost to Build a Solar Power System?
It depends. We know, it’s a frustrating answer. So what are you looking at? $500, $5,000, or $50,000? While we can’t give you a definitive number, we can show you what factors impact your costs, and what ballpark price range you may be looking at depending on your needs.
But first, YOUR attitude matters!
We have quite a few tricks up our sleeves to help our clients shave as much as half the cost of their off-grid solar solutions. But our unique approach requires them to roll with us, be open to experimentation and doing things differently, and become an active participant in the project.
Our commonsense approach to off-grid solar is about understanding your usage patterns and determining sensible tradeoffs to dimension a system that meets your needs without paying for the capacity you don’t use with minimum compromises.
Meanwhile, we guide our clients to take a phased approach to iterating their solutions. We design modular, expandable systems to which we can add capacity over time, enabling our clients to upgrade their solutions as their needs evolve.
This approach also allows us to isolate one bottleneck at a time to improve a system’s capacity instead of doing a $10k+ overhaul—squeezing the most out of every component before adding more to the system.
For example, this client collects data from his phase 1 implementation to understand how much solar power his system generates and how his household’s usage pattern changes throughout the seasons. The data will help us determine how many solar panels and battery capacity he will need for phase 2 to optimize his budget.
Our philosophy empowers our clients to learn about their solar power systems and become self-reliant when appropriate to be part of the solution. While you shouldn’t be rewiring your system without proper training, you can track your power production and consumption to know how best to position your panels and adjust your usage pattern to meet your needs.
Factors affecting the cost of building or revamping a solar power system
The type of solution you choose will significantly affect the cost. Here’s what we consider when recommending options for our clients:
Off-grid vs. grid-tied: A grid-tied solution ranges from $15k to $60k. Meanwhile, an off-grid solution, built from scratch to power the entire house, costs around $12k.
Do-it-with-us vs. full-service: We help our clients reduce costs by involving them in the implementation to save on labor and liability insurance expenses.
Outage protection and heavy usage at night: Your cost will be higher if you need more battery capacity to run appliances after dark without grid backup.
Solar panel mounting method: You can save a pretty penny if you anchor the panels in the ground instead of mounting them on the roof.
Current system’s bottleneck: The reason impacting your current system’s performance (i.e., solar, inverter, or battery capacity) will determine what you need to upgrade.
So, what’s right for you?
The choose-your-own-solar-adventure flowchart
This flow chart covers most scenarios and gives you a ballpark cost based on your requirements and current setup:
>> Download the PDF to zoom and print.
We can help you set up a complete off-grid system from scratch, use solar to lower your electricity bills and boost resiliency (without the cost or complexity of a grid-tied system), or upgrade your current off-grid installation. Learn more about our off-grid solar solution and get in touch.
