Solar Panel Cost in Texas 2026 (TDU Audit)

Solar in Texas runs roughly $2.20 to $2.80 per watt installed before incentives — about $22,000 to $28,000 for a 10 kW system. That is among the lowest pricing in the country. Labor is cheaper here, permitting is faster, and installers fight hard on price.

But the price per watt is not where Texas quotes go wrong. Two other things decide whether a Texas solar deal is any good, and both are invisible on a proposal: which delivery utility you are on, and whether you can even choose your electricity provider. Get either wrong and the savings number in front of you is fiction.

What Texas solar costs by system size

Add a battery and you are typically looking at another $12,000 to $15,000. In Texas that is usually sold on grid reliability rather than economics, which is a legitimate reason — just make sure it is priced as resilience and not as a savings engine.

The TDU audit: the part of your bill solar does not touch

This is the single most useful thing on this page, and almost no Texas proposal accounts for it honestly.

Your Texas electricity bill has three parts:

• Energy charges — what your retail provider bills per kWh you consume. Solar offsets this.
• TDU delivery charges — what the wires company (Oncor, CenterPoint, AEP Texas, TNMP) bills to move power to your meter. Solar offsets almost none of this, because you are still pulling from the grid at night and still connected all day.
• Fixed monthly charges — solar does not touch these at all.

Those delivery charges are set by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, not by your retail provider — so the underlying rate is the same whoever you buy energy from, and going solar does not change it.

One caveat worth knowing, because it trips people up when they compare plans: some retailers show the delivery charge as its own line, and others bundle it into the displayed per-kWh price. A plan that looks cheaper per kWh may simply have folded delivery into the number. The Electricity Facts Label is where the components are broken out — read that, not the marketing rate.

Run the arithmetic on a 1,500 kWh month in Oncor territory: $4.06 plus about $90 in delivery charges. That is roughly $1,130 a year that solar will not eliminate, before you pay for a single kilowatt-hour of energy. In CenterPoint territory it is now about $1,213 — that jumped on September 1, 2026, when CenterPoint's transmission cost recovery rider nearly doubled from 1.6173¢ to 3.0812¢/kWh, taking all-in delivery from 4.9811¢ to 6.4130¢. In TNMP territory, over $1,250.

Any proposal that shows your Texas bill going to zero is wrong by about a thousand dollars a year. That is the number to put in front of a salesperson.

These rates move — which matters for a 25-year model

Texas delivery charges are not fixed, and they move on a schedule. The PUCT adjusts TDU rates twice a year, effective March 1 and September 1, covering base distribution and riders like the transmission and energy-efficiency cost recovery factors.

Most of those adjustments are small. Some are not. On September 1, 2026, CenterPoint's residential transmission rider went from 1.6173¢ to 3.0812¢ per kWh — nearly double — pushing all-in delivery from 4.9811¢ to 6.4130¢ and adding roughly $258 a year to a 1,500 kWh household before a single kilowatt-hour of energy is bought. A savings model that holds today's delivery charge flat for 25 years is making an assumption the last twelve months already disproved.

One practical note: the tariff triggers on scheduled meter read dates on and after September 1, not the calendar date — so a new rate lands on your bill at your next read, not on the 1st.

Ask what delivery charge the model used and what escalator was applied to it. If the answer is "it's baked in", that is not an answer. Here is how to find these charges on your own bill.

Can you even choose your provider? It depends on your city

People talk about "deregulated Texas" as though it covers the state. It does not, and if you live in one of the exceptions, most Texas solar advice you will read simply does not apply to you.

Why this decides your deal: in the deregulated cities, what you get paid for exported solar depends entirely on which retail provider you pick, and you can shop it. That is a live lever — the difference between a good buyback plan and a bad one is worth more than a few hundred dollars off the install price.

In San Antonio, Austin and El Paso there is nothing to shop. Your utility sets the terms and that is the deal. So a salesperson promising to "put you on a great buyback plan" in San Antonio is either confused or improvising.

Texas has no statewide net metering — and that is the point

There is no state rule requiring anyone to buy your exported solar, and no guaranteed rate if they do. What exists instead is a market of voluntary solar buyback plans from retail providers in the deregulated areas, with wildly different terms: some credit at full retail, some at a wholesale-ish rate, some cap the credit at your monthly usage, and some pair a good buyback rate with a bad energy rate so the plan costs you more overall.

That last one is the trap worth knowing about, and it is common. The full breakdown of how Texas buyback plans work — and what to check before signing one goes through the three types and the specific clauses that cost people money.

The practical consequence for sizing: because export value in Texas is uncertain and changeable, a system sized well beyond your own consumption is a bet on a plan you can be moved off. Sizing near your actual usage is the more defensible position here.

Incentives: what is real in Texas

Texas has no state solar tax credit. What it does have is a property-tax exemption on the value solar adds to your home — you claim it by filing Form 50-123 with your county appraisal district — plus utility rebates where a program is open and funded. The current incentive picture is here.

On the federal side, be careful: the 30% residential credit under Section 25D terminated on December 31, 2025. A 2026 cash or loan purchase gets no personal federal credit. If a Texas proposal still subtracts 30%, it is wrong by thousands and every number downstream of it — payback, monthly savings, break-even year — is wrong too. Here is how to spot it.

Questions worth asking before you sign in Texas

1. "Which TDU am I on, and what delivery charge did your model assume?" After the September 2026 adjustment they cluster tightly — TNMP 6.4665¢, CenterPoint 6.4130¢, Oncor 6.0295¢, AEP Texas Central 5.7824¢, AEP North 5.6677¢. CenterPoint used to be the cheap one at 4.9811¢ and is not any more, so a model built on last year's figure understates the bill.
2. "What does my bill look like if solar covers 100% of my energy?" The honest answer is still roughly $950–$1,250 a year in delivery and fixed charges.
3. "What escalator did you apply to the delivery charge?" Those rates changed twice in 2026.
4. "Which buyback plan is this modeled on, and what happens when it ends?" In San Antonio, Austin or El Paso, there is no plan to choose — so ask why it is in the model.
5. "What percentage of my annual usage does this system produce?" Well above 100% is a bet on export terms you do not control.
6. "Is there a 30% federal credit in this proposal?" There should not be, for a purchase.

Get a second opinion before you sign

Texas is cheap for solar and crowded with sellers, which is exactly the combination that produces aggressive quoting. Most of what goes wrong here is not fraud — it is a savings model that quietly ignores $1,000 a year of delivery charges, a buyback plan assumed to last forever, or a federal credit that no longer exists.

All of that is visible in the paperwork in about fifteen minutes. If you have a Texas quote — or you have signed and have not been installed yet — send it over and I will read it for free and tell you straight whether it holds up.