Solar Panels in El Paso, TX: 2026 Cost, El Paso Electric Net Metering & Savings

El Paso and the bill

El Paso Electric serves the city. El Paso is not in the ERCOT competitive market. There is no retail-provider shopping of the Houston type. The utility's own tariff is the whole bill. El Paso is the Texas city where the sun resource actually looks like the Southwest. We use about 6.4 peak sun hours, far above Houston's 4.6. The cooling load is a dry-heat load. Dust and high module temperatures both take a little production back. Because the utility is vertically integrated, you are not hunting a buyback add-on from a retail broker. You are reading El Paso Electric's schedule. That is simpler, and it is still not the EIA state average. The 2025 EIA residential average for Texas was 15.40 cents per kWh. That statewide figure is what our calculator uses. It is not the El Paso Electric tariff. A rounded solar resource for this metro is about 6.4 peak sun hours a day.

Export credits and any SREC or REC

El Paso Electric is outside ERCOT. Retail choice and a CenterPoint or Oncor buyback story do not describe this bill. El Paso Electric's own tariff is the export document. The solar resource here is stronger than on the Gulf Coast. Hail and desert dust are the local equipment issues, not a Houston hurricane detail copied west. This page does not quote an El Paso export rate.

Roofs, climate, permits, and HOAs

Flat and low-slope roofs are more common than in Dallas. Flat-roof mounting has to respect drainage and wind. Stucco houses with small south planes need a layout, not a rule of thumb from a Houston subdivision. Many roofs are unshaded, which is the opposite of a Tallahassee oak street. A El Paso permit comes from the local building department, not from El Paso Electric. An HOA can add its own review. This page does not quote a TX permit fee or an approval, because both depend on the address. Ask for temperature losses in the production model. A desert nameplate that ignores heat will overstate summer output. Confirm the project is El Paso Electric and not an ERCOT retail product. Those are different regulatory worlds.

Estimated cost range

Estimated cost range for El Paso, labeled as an estimate and not a local quote: Berkeley Lab's August 2026 update put 2025 host-owned residential systems at about $3.60 per watt before incentives, about $3.00 per watt in the cash subset, and about $4.50 per watt in the loan subset. The median size in that set was 7.7 kW. El Paso is about 6.4 peak sun hours a day, against about 5.3 statewide. The federal residential credit under 26 U.S.C. § 25D ended for systems placed in service after December 31, 2025. The IRS treats that expenditure as made when the original installation is completed.

• 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.