Solar Panels in Texas: 2026 Cost, Incentives & Savings

• Cash

  $3.00/W

  $23,100

  Subset classified as cash

• Middle published case

  $3.60/W

  $27,720

  All host-owned systems

• Loan

  $4.50/W

  $34,650

  Financed subset, before interest

Before incentives. A loan price here excludes interest. The federal residential credit under section 25D ended for systems placed in service after December 31, 2025. Berkeley Lab, U.S. Distributed Solar and Storage, August 2026 data update.

How to read Texas

Texas combined a 15.40 cent per kWh residential average in the 2025 EIA data with a solar resource that runs from the Gulf Coast to the far west desert. Most of the state is in ERCOT. A large share of ERCOT households buy electricity from a retail provider and pay a separate delivery utility. Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso do not fit that sentence.

Utilities

Oncor delivers in much of Dallas-Fort Worth. CenterPoint delivers in the Houston area. AEP Texas delivers in parts of South and West Texas, including much of Corpus Christi. Austin Energy and CPS Energy are municipal utilities without retail choice. El Paso Electric is outside ERCOT. The plan name on a competitive bill can change every contract term. The delivery company usually does not.

Export credits and tariffs

Do not describe Texas as a classic net-metering state. In competitive areas, export payment is a feature of the retail plan you buy, and the plan can expire. Municipal utilities publish their own tariffs. Our estimate still uses the EIA statewide average so the assumption is obvious. A proposal should use the plan or the municipal tariff instead.

Climate and roofs

Hail is a real design and insurance issue from North Texas through Austin. Hurricane and tropical-storm wind matter on the Gulf. West Texas has a much stronger solar resource and a different dust and heat profile. One state page cannot pick a single roof story. The city pages do.

Cities

• Houston

  CenterPoint delivers the power. A retail provider sells it. The Gulf Coast resource is good, not West Texas good.

• Dallas

  Oncor delivery, retail choice, a stronger resource than Houston, and a serious hail belt.

• Fort Worth

  Oncor and retail choice, like Dallas, with western Tarrant County roofs that are often newer and more exposed.

• Plano

  A northern suburb on Oncor, with newer roofs, HOAs, and the same retail-choice export problem as Dallas.

• Austin

  A municipal utility with no retail choice, its own solar tariff, and a hail-prone Hill Country roof stock.

• San Antonio

  CPS Energy, a municipal utility, with a strong resource and a different tariff from Austin Energy an hour up the road.

• El Paso

  Outside ERCOT, on El Paso Electric, with a desert resource closer to New Mexico than to Houston.

• Corpus Christi

  A Gulf Coast city on AEP Texas wires, humid, windy, and not a municipal-utility island.