It’s more expensive to add solar panels to your home in Los Angeles than EnergySage, and other online marketplaces would have you believe, but it’s still worth it, given the high cost of electricity in the City of Angels. Here is the real deal on solar costs in LA.
Table of Contents
- The per Watt cost of home solar in LA County is quite a bit higher than online quote marketplaces would have you believe.
- The good news is that the average LA household can install a much smaller solar energy system to meet annual electricity needs.
- How does it all shake out? Most homeowners are looking at a cost of around $18,758 for a 4.15 kW system, or around $13,000 after the federal solar tax credit.
- If your utility is SCE, you could save more than $100,000 on utility bills over the 25-year warranty of your solar panels!
- Some homeowners could recoup the cost of going solar in just 2-3 years in LA, while most have a solar payback period of less than 10 years.
Los Angeles has the most installed solar capacity of any city in the U.S., which isn’t surprising when you consider how much sunshine LA gets and how aware most homeowners are of the perils of climate change. No one here needs to add to the city’s air pollution by burning more fossil fuels, so if you’re able to generate clean energy on your rooftop, why not!?
Solar can still seem out of reach to many homeowners, though, but is it really that expensive?
How much does it cost to go solar in Los Angeles? Let’s find out.
Get matched with a LeafScore rated solar installer in LA
The cost of home solar in Los Angeles
Online solar quote marketplaces typically give average costs for home solar in LA of around $2.90 per Watt. This works out to $14,500 for a 5 kW system. By our calculations, based on real-life data (not wishful thinking of online quotes), the actual cost of going solar in LA County in 2023 is likely to be closer to $4.52 per Watt. That works out to $22,600 for a 5 kW system, before federal incentives and other discounts.
We used data from actual installations from California Distributed Generation Statistics to determine how much it cost to go solar at home in Los Angeles County in the first half of 2023.
| Cost per Watt $USD | Cost for 5 kW system $USD | Cost for 7.83 kW system $USD | Cost for 4.15 kW system $USD | |
| Online quote marketplaces | 2.90 | 14,500 | 22,707 | 12,035 |
| CDGS average cost for actual installations in 2023 to July | 4.52 | 22,600 | 35,392 | 18,758 |
| Net cost of solar | 15,820 | 24,774 | 13,131 |
Note that we’ve included the cost of a 5 kW system – the model usually used by online quote marketplaces – and two other system sizes. These represent the average size of system actually installed by LA County homeowners in 2023 (7.83 kW) and the size of system the SunWatts calculator suggests most LA homeowners need (4.15 kW).
Note, too, that for homeowners who install solar storage batteries, incentives of up to $900 per kW of storage are available through California’s Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP). This could help shave thousands of dollars off your home solar installation.
What size solar array do I need in LA?
The average Los Angeles household uses around 580-kilowatt hours of electricity each month, or 6,957 kWh annually. To meet these needs in the sunny city of LA, most homeowners would only need to install a 4.15 kW rooftop array, according to the SunWatts calculator.
However, according to data from California Distributed Generation Statistics, the average size of a residential rooftop solar energy system installed in LA County in 2023 was a bit bigger. Home solar projects that interconnected to Southern California Edison (SCE) in 2023 averaged 7.83 kW. The average cost for these installations was $35,392.
Get matched with a solar installer in Los Anegeles
City of LA vs. LA county solar costs
The cost of going solar is higher in the City of Los Angeles compared to the county as a whole. This may be an example of how larger solar arrays are more cost efficient to install than smaller arrays.
If you break down the data for the City of LA versus the County, homeowners in the city tend to install smaller arrays on average than the county as a whole. The cost, however, is actually higher per Watt.
| Average system size kW DC | Average total cost | Cost per Watt DC | |
| 2023 SCE LA County | 7.83 | $35,380 | $4.52 |
| 2023 SCE city of LA | 6.24 | $33,177 | $5.32 |
The true cost of going solar in LA depends on the actual size of the array. Other factors that affect price include:
- The complexity of the installation
- The installer
- Which equipment you choose
- Whether you include battery storage
- Whether you’re installing an EV charger.
In general, though, a home solar installation in Los Angeles costs less than in most other places in the U.S. And because of the high cost of electricity here, homeowners stand to save a lot of money by going solar. This makes the solar payback period in LA much shorter than in almost anywhere else in America.
Check out our solar incentives in California page for more information.
Get matched with a LeafScore rated solar installer
How much can you save by going solar in Los Angeles?
Most homeowners in Los Angeles get their electricity from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). The average LA household uses around 580-kilowatt hours of electricity each month, or 6,957 kWh annually. In August 2023, Los Angeles area households paid an average of 28.0 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity. This is higher than the 24.7 cents price per kWh paid in August 2022 and significantly (about 64.7 percent) than the nationwide average of 17.0 cents per kWh.
In the past five years, prices paid by Los Angeles area consumers for electricity exceeded the U.S. average by 34.5 percent or more in the month of August.
Households that use more electricity also pay a higher rate overall, because LADWP has a tiered rate structure.
What’s more, if you live just outside of the city of LA and get your electricity from Southern California Edison (SCE), you may be paying closer to 30 c/kWh. This works out to just over $2,087 a year for electricity, assuming average use of 6,957 kWh. If this is the case for you, going solar at home could save you even more money and shorten that solar payback period considerably.
Assuming you’re paying 28 c/kWh, though, installing a home solar array that meets all your energy needs would still save you around $1,948 in the first year alone. Add in the fact that electricity costs increase every year, with inflation much higher than historic averages in recent years, and you stand to save yet more on going solar at home in LA.
Using the September 2023 inflation rate of 3.62%, LA homeowners who go solar in 2023 might expect to save nearly $87,000 over the 25-year warranty period of most solar panels.
Solar savings in LA
| Solar savings (at 6,957 kWh/yr and 28 c/kWh) | 3.62% inflation (U.S. historic average) |
| 5-year savings | $10,471 |
| 10-year savings | $22,979 |
| 15-year savings | $37,922 |
| 25-year savings | $86,745 |
This calculation of potential savings assumes a homeowner installs a solar energy system that offsets 100 percent of their energy draw from the grid. It also assumes that customers are using the average amount of electricity and paying just 28 c/kWh.
Your actual savings will depend on your current electricity tariff, changes to energy costs in the future, how much electricity you use, how well your array functions, and other factors.
Putting it all together – Your solar payback period in Los Angeles
Going solar at home in LA makes a lot of financial sense for most households. The average cost of a 4.15 kW installation works out to close to $13,000 after the federal tax credit, and even at a low rate of inflation solar savings could rack up to more than $10,000 by 2029.
Most solar energy systems in LA pay for themselves in savings in less than 10 years, leaving you another 15 years of free electricity within the warranty of your panels and many more outside of the warranty.
If high inflation sticks around for the next few years, though, your solar payback period could be much faster.
Here are a few examples of how a solar payback period might look in LA.
For the calculations below, I assumed an average annual household electricity use of 6,957 kWh and average cost of electricity of 28 c/kWh as per costs in August 2023.
| Without federal tax credit (ITC) | With ITC | With DAC-SASH program (approx. $3/W) and no ITC | With ITC and battery rebate (approx. $3,000) | |
| Cost of rooftop solar (5 kW array) | $22,600 | $15,820 | $7,600 | $13,720 |
| Average cost of electricity for first 5 / 10 / 15 years at 3.62% inflation | $10,471 / $22,979 / $37,922 | |||
| Solar payback period | 9-10 years | 7 years | 3-4 years | 6 years |
If, however, your household uses more like the national average of 9,644 kWh annually, not the 6,597 kWh I estimated from census data, your payback period will be much shorter.
| Without federal tax credit (ITC) | With ITC | With DAC-SASH program (approx. $3/W) and no ITC | With ITC and battery rebate (approx. $3,000) | |
| Cost of rooftop solar (5 kW array) | $22,600 | $15,820 | $7,600 | $13,720 |
| Average cost of electricity for first 5 and 10 years at 3.62% inflation | $14,515 / $31,855 / $52,568 | |||
| Solar payback period | 7-8 years | 5-6 years | 2-3 years | 4-5 years |
Even if you install a big battery system, generous rebates help to reduce the upfront cost and keep your solar payback period short. In fact, homeowners who do install batteries may pay off their solar array faster by being able to reduce how much electricity they draw from the grid overnight.
Toggle the numbers however you like, chances are you’ll recoup the cost of home solar in LA in less than 10 years through savings on your utility bills. In some cases, you could recoup the costs in savings in just 2-3 years!
Final thoughts on the cost of going solar in Los Angeles
Going solar in LA is a wise choice for most homeowners. High electricity costs, plentiful sunshine, and a good incentive for battery storage makes for a very short solar payback period. This means LA homeowners could enjoy more than two decades of free electricity generated on their roof within the warranty of their panels. And even after the 25-year warranty is up, those panels can continue producing free electricity for years.
Given that California is prone to blackouts and brownouts, going solar at home in LA is also a great way to keep the lights on during an outage. Make sure to talk to your installer about a backup battery system that safely kicks in when the grid is down.