With plentiful sun and high electricity use and costs, homeowners in Las Vegas stand to save big by going solar at home. Our calculations suggest a 2023 cost of solar in Las Vegas of around $4.26 per Watt, just over $30,000 gross, and around $21,000 after the federal solar tax credit.
Las Vegas comes third in the U.S. for cities with the most installed solar capacity. Home solar is a great idea in what we’re renaming Sun City rather than Sin City. Homeowners here pay a high price for electricity and use a lot of it. Twice as much, in fact, as residents of Los Angeles!
All in, Las Vegans are looking at paying more on average for home solar than in a lot of places in the U.S. The good news, though, is that the solar payback period is still very short. This means a rooftop array remains a solid investment in Las Vegas.
The cost of home solar in Las Vegas
It’s especially tricky to estimate the cost of home solar in Las Vegas. I explain why below, but for now here’s our Leaf Score prediction for the cost of solar in Las Vegas for 2023:
| Cost per Watt | Cost for 5 kW system | Cost for 7.22 kW system | Cost for 8.4 kW system | |
| Online quote marketplaces | $2.58 | $12,900 | $18,628 | $21,672 |
| Quotes factoring in average discrepancy | $4.10 | $20,522 | $29,633 | $34,477 |
| LBNL median average for 2021 Nevada | $4.05 | $20,261 | $29,257 | $34,038 |
| Weighted average and Leafscore prediction for 2023 | $4.26 | $21,299 | $30,755 | $35,782 |
Where we got our data
Online solar quote marketplaces cite a cost of solar in Las Vegas, Nevada, at around $2.58 per Watt. A typical 5 kW system would cost, therefore, around $12,900. Online quotes are usually based on wishful thinking, though, with real-life data showing a far higher cost to go solar.
In other parts of the country, we’ve found that the true cost of home solar can be as much as 40-80 percent higher than online quotes. The cost of solar in Las Vegas could be closer, then, to $4.10 to $4.64 per Watt, or $23,220 for a 5 kW system.
Given that Las Vegans use a lot more electricity than average to heat and cool their homes, the actual cost of a real-life solar array may be even higher still. That’s because homeowners who want to fully offset their electricity use will need to install a larger solar array than the 5 kW model used for online quotes.
Unfortunately, Nevada’s granulated solar installation data isn’t available in the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory (LBNL) Tracking the Sun report. This means we can’t use our preferred method for calculating the cost of home solar in Las Vegas. And, unlike California, Nevada also fails to publish state data on residential solar. The LBNL report does, however, note that the median average cost per Watt (DC) installed in Nevada in 2021 was $4.05.
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Previous reports suggest that solar costs more in major cities than the average state price. To create our weighted Leaf Score prediction for the cost of solar in 2023 in Las Vegas, then, we looked to the adjusted cost per Watt from online quotes and the national and state averages from the LBNL report, adjusting for inflation and other factors for 2023.
Our conclusion is that the 2023 cost of solar in Las Vegas will be around $4.26 per Watt. For any given homeowner, though, the actual cost of going solar will depend on their individual circumstances, including things like the shape and size of their roof, their current and anticipated electricity usage, and which installer and equipment they choose.
What size solar array do I need in Las Vegas?
Nevada was home to approximately 3.144 million people in 2021, with 1,141,952 households reported by the U.S. Census. These residents used approximately 14,373 million kilowatt hours of electricity in 2021, which means the average Nevada household consumed 12,586 kWh of electricity that year, or around 1085 kWh each month.
That figure is quite a bit higher than the U.S. average of around 11,000 kWh annually and nearly twice as high as the average in Los Angeles. The U.S. Energy Information Administration notes that one in three Nevada households uses electricity for heating and air conditioning, resulting in higher than average electricity consumption in the residential sector.
Accordingly, Nevada residents, including Las Vegans, would need to install a larger solar array than average. The good news, though, is that Las Vegas is a very sunny spot. It gets around 6.37 sun hours daily, which means solar panels produce a lot of electricity to help offset that energy use. We used the SunWatts calculator to work out that the average Las Vegas homeowner would need a 7.22 kW array to offset 100 percent of their electricity needs.
This size of array is nearly double that needed by the average Los Angeles household (3.9 kW), which automatically implies a higher cost of going solar in Las Vegas than in LA.
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What size arrays are Las Vegans actually installing?
The LBNL doesn’t offer granular data for Las Vegas home solar installations but does offer snapshots of residential solar in Nevada. For instance, the LBNL calculated that in 2021 homeowners installed an average 8.4 kW system on their roofs in the state, based on a total of 14,342 installations.
In other areas of the U.S., we’ve found that homeowners installing solar in cities tend to install smaller arrays on average than their rural counterparts. As such, we model our solar savings and solar payback period for Las Vegas on the smaller, 7.22 kW, array size per the SunWatts calculation.
How much can you save by going solar in Las Vegas?
Homeowners in Las Vegas use a lot of electricity and pay more for it than the average across the U.S. This, coupled with plentiful sunshine, is a perfect recipe for big savings by going solar at home.
As of November 2022, the U.S. Energy Information Administration cites a cost of 15.27 cents per kilowatt hour in Nevada. Assuming average electricity use for Nevada, a Las Vegas homeowner could be paying as much as $1922 a year on their utility bill. Installing a properly sized solar array could save homeowners a lot of money over the life of the solar panels, especially if you factor in ever-increasing electricity costs.
Here’s a snapshot of how much you could save by going solar in Las Vegas in 2023:
| Solar savings (at 6,540 kWh/yr and 22.1 c/kWh) | 2.4% inflation (U.S. historic average) | 6.4% inflation (as of February 2023) |
| 5-year savings | $10,082 | $10,921 |
| 10-year savings | $21,433 | $25,813 |
| 15-year savings | $34,213 | $46,121 |
| 25-year savings | $67,271 | $109,159 |
How much you save will depend on your electricity use and tariff, the efficiency of the installed solar array, and its capacity. The figures above assume that the installed array completely offsets all of a household’s electricity needs, which means either a 1:1 net metering tariff or an adequately sized array with storage installed as a backup power source for overnight use.
Lowering the cost of solar in Las Vegas
Nevada doesn’t offer much in the way of upfront state credits and rebates for solar but some homeowners can enjoy a utility rebate of up to $3,000 when installing solar storage batteries.
Las Vegas homeowners can also recoup the cost of going solar faster thanks to net metering and a solar carve-out as part of Nevada’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS). Homeowners in Las Vegas can expect a 75% return on excess electricity sent back to the grid each month, as well as a small amount of annual income from selling portfolio energy credits (PECs) to utilities.
While current prices of PECs in Las Vegas are unavailable, estimates suggest homeowners can expect to earn around $450 annually until at least 2025 from the RPS program in the state.
All of these solar incentives in Nevada help to improve the return on investment from going solar at home in Las Vegas.
For more information, check out Nevada solar incentives.
Putting it all together – Your solar payback period in Las Vegas
The average cost of home solar in Las Vegas is around $30,755 gross for a 7.22 kW array. Average savings over 10-15 years could easily amount to $30,000 or more. At its simplest, then, the solar payback period in Las Vegas is likely to be around 10-15 years even without the federal solar tax credit.
Factor in incentives and homeowners stand to recoup the cost of home solar in Las Vegas in less than half the warranty period of their panels. That means nearly two decades of warrantied free electricity production right from the roof.
Here’s how the solar payback period might look in Las Vegas.
Small array, average inflation (2.4%), no state or utility incentives
| 5 kW array | |
| Gross cost | $21,299 |
| State rebates and tax credits | |
| Utility rebates and incentives | |
| Subtotal | $21,299 |
| Federal tax credit of 30% | $6390 |
| Net cost of solar | $14,909 |
| Cost of electricity (c/kWh) | 15.27 |
| Average electricity use (kWh/yr) | 12,586 |
| Ten-year savings (assuming 69% of energy use offset) | $14,842 |
Solar payback period = just over 10 years!
Small array, average inflation (2.4%), plus storage incentives
| 5 kW array | |
| Gross cost | $21,299 |
| State rebates and tax credits | |
| Utility rebates and incentives ($150 per kW for 5 kW battery) | $1,500 |
| Subtotal | $19,799 |
| Federal tax credit of 30% | $5,940 |
| Net cost of solar | $13,859 |
| Cost of electricity (c/kWh) | 15.27 |
| Average electricity use (kWh/yr) | 12,586 |
| Nine-year savings (assuming 69% of energy use offset) | $13,195 |
Solar payback period = just over 9 years!
Larger array, average inflation (2.4%), plus storage incentives
| 7.22 kW array | |
| Gross cost | $30,755 |
| State rebates and tax credits | |
| Utility rebates and incentives ($150 per kW for 5 kW battery) | $3,000 |
| Subtotal | $27,755 |
| Federal tax credit of 30% | $8,327 |
| Net cost of solar | $19,429 |
| Cost of electricity (c/kWh) | 15.27 |
| Average electricity use (kWh/yr) | 12,586 |
| Nine-year savings (assuming 100% of energy use offset) | $19,054 |
Solar payback period = just over 9 years!
Larger array, higher inflation (6.4%), plus storage incentives
| 7.22 kW array | |
| Gross cost | $30,755 |
| State rebates and tax credits | |
| Utility rebates and incentives ($850 per kW for 10 kW battery) | $3,000 |
| Subtotal | $27,755 |
| Federal tax credit of 30% | $8,327 |
| Net cost of solar | $19,429 |
| Cost of electricity (c/kWh) | 15.27 |
| Average electricity use (kWh/yr) | 12,586 |
| Eight-year savings (assuming 100% of energy use offset) | $19,297 |
Solar payback period = just over 8 years!
Larger array, higher inflation (6.4%), plus storage incentives and PECs
| 7.22 kW array | |
| Gross cost | $30,755 |
| State rebates and tax credits | |
| Utility rebates and incentives ($850 per kW for 10 kW battery) | $3,000 |
| Subtotal | $27,755 |
| Federal tax credit of 30% | $8,327 |
| Net cost of solar | $19,429 |
| PECs ($450/yr) for 7 years | $3,150 |
| Cost of electricity (c/kWh) | 15.27 |
| Average electricity use (kWh/yr) | 12,586 |
| Seven-year savings (assuming 100% of energy use offset) | $16,330 |
| Net | $19,480 |
Solar payback period = just under 7 years!
However you run the numbers, chances are that Las Vegans will recoup the cost of home solar in 10 years or less. Installing a backup battery system and an array that meets all or most of your household electricity needs could make for a shorter solar payback period than installing a smaller array.
Final thoughts on the cost of going solar in Las Vegas
Las Vegas is a popular place to go solar at home, and for good reasons. Residents of the city that never sleeps sure love to use electricity, for which they pay a pretty price. Factor in some sunny days, federal, state, and utility incentives and most homeowners here can pay off their upfront cost of going solar in less than a decade. For some, the solar payback period in Las Vegas might be as short as 6-7 years!
Note, though, that Nevada has courted a good deal of controversy when it comes to solar regulations. From its net metering policy to stalled community solar projects, the state has a spotty track record for renewables. Anyone interested in installing home solar in the next few years would be wise to move quickly, before any utility and state incentives decrease or disappear entirely.