Twenty Years That Changed Solar

How solar became one of the lowest-cost ways to make electricity at home.

How solar became one of the lowest-cost ways to make electricity at home, how Massachusetts helped open the market, and why simpler permitting should be next

By Gregory Garrison, President, Northeast Solar Design Associates | August 2026

One sentence from a recent Ezra Klein conversation with Bill McKibben stayed with me: renewables are now the cheapest form of energy, especially solar.

That statement is broadly right, and the twenty-year record explains why. Better panels and larger-scale manufacturing lowered hardware costs. Federal incentives and Massachusetts programs brought early customers into the market. Schools and employers trained workers. Installers learned, lenders gained confidence, and homeowners showed their neighbors that the technology worked. The result is not simply cheaper equipment. It is the ability for a household to own part of its energy supply and make that cost more predictable for decades.

Last month, I wrote about the Massachusetts Senate's energy bill. My point was simple: the bill would help more families make the transition to cleaner energy while protecting the value of renewable energy for the households already making that investment.

That raises a larger question. How did solar become accessible enough that state policy can open the door wider? What still keeps families on the other side? And what can Massachusetts do next to lower the cost without lowering the standards?

I have had a front-row seat to much of this story. In 2008, I stepped away from a transportation business and enrolled in the renewable-energy program at Greenfield Community College. Solar was not new, but residential solar was still unfamiliar to most homeowners and financially out of reach for many.

A few years later, that education became Northeast Solar. Since then, panels have become more powerful and far less expensive. Federal tax policy and Massachusetts programs helped create a market. Local electricians, designers, installers, educators, inspectors, and customers turned that market into an industry.

Northeast Solar grew inside that change. We started with solar. Today we also install batteries, mini-splits, and EV charging, and we help families plan those investments as one home-energy system. That is not a departure from solar. It is what became possible because solar succeeded.

This is the twenty-year story of how we got here, told from the roof down.

Solar is inexpensive. Ownership makes the cost predictable.

For many homeowners in Montague, Northampton, Pittsfield, and across Western Massachusetts, owned solar can provide some of the least expensive and most predictable electricity they will use for decades. A household is buying years of electricity in advance from equipment that does not require fuel. Sunshine does not become more expensive next winter, and the cost of the electricity produced by the system is largely established when the system is purchased.

That ownership matters because utility electricity remains tied to a regional energy market that can change quickly. ISO New England reported that wholesale electricity averaged 6.6 cents per kilowatt-hour in the real-time market and 7.2 cents in the day-ahead market in 2025. Total regional wholesale electricity costs reached $15 billion, 48 percent higher than the year before, driven largely by natural-gas prices that more than doubled. Those are not residential electric rates or the cost of a rooftop solar system, but they demonstrate the fuel-price volatility that homeowners can avoid on the portion of their electricity produced by solar.

A residential system is designed for one roof, one electrical service, one family’s energy use, one utility, and one local permitting office. Roof condition, shade, system design, financing, maintenance, and utility compensation all affect the final economics. That is why the useful question is not whether solar is the cheapest choice everywhere. It is what a well-designed, fairly priced system could make electricity cost at your home.

Every home is different. Northeast Solar can evaluate your property and show you what your household energy costs could look like with solar, so you can decide whether ownership makes sense for you.

That household advantage did not appear overnight. It was built through twenty years of cheaper equipment, better systems, supportive policy, and accumulated experience.

Twenty years of falling prices changed the household equation

The cost of the core technology changed dramatically. IRENA’s European module-price series shows an average 97 percent decline between January 2010 and January 2024. Panels also became more efficient, allowing more electricity to be produced from the same roof area, racking, labor, and wiring.

When I began installing solar in 2010, a residential system typically cost about $10 to $12 per watt. Today, Northeast Solar installs systems for roughly $2.80 to $4.00 per watt, depending on the complexity of the installation and the components selected. That is a substantial decline, although not the 97 percent drop seen in solar-panel prices because panels are only one part of a complete system. Our price also covers design, engineering, skilled labor, customer education, permitting, utility interconnection, inspections, scheduling, insurance, service, and the overhead required to stand behind our work.

While panel prices fell, the electricity-supply price charged to default-service customers in Western Massachusetts moved in the other direction. The comparison below uses the utilities' published fixed Basic Service rates. It excludes delivery, transmission, customer, and other charges on the utility bill.

The current rates cover the six-month period beginning in August 2026. Basic Service is the supply charge, but it is not raw wholesale energy alone: it includes procurement, renewable-energy compliance, and small administrative costs. Customers in a municipal aggregation or using a competitive supplier may pay a different supply rate.

This is still not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison. A panel is only one component of a complete home system, while Basic Service is the price of electricity supplied by the utility. But the direction is unmistakable: the core solar technology fell 97 percent in price while default utility-supply rates increased roughly 39 to 48 percent. Customers who purchased solar during those early years largely locked in the cost of the electricity their systems would produce, protecting that portion of their household energy use from future utility-rate increases.

The price decline made solar competitive. Public policy helped enough households participate that a durable market could form.

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Policy lowered the entry price and gave the market time to grow

Technology and manufacturing drove the dramatic decline in panel prices. Public policy lowered the entry price and created enough stability for manufacturers, installers, lenders, schools, workers, and customers to invest and learn.

The federal residential solar credit began in 2006 at 30 percent, initially with a $2,000 cap for solar-electric property. Congress removed that cap in 2008. The Department of Energy launched the SunShot Initiative in 2011 to reduce both hardware and the less visible costs of permitting, inspection, interconnection, financing, and customer acquisition. The Inflation Reduction Act restored the residential credit to 30 percent in 2022 and scheduled it to remain there through 2032 before phasing down.

Then federal policy reversed direction. Congress ended the 30 percent residential solar credit after 2025. It did not, however, withdraw federal support from energy development. It shifted that support.

At the same time, the 2025 law lowered the federal royalty rate for new oil and gas leases from 16.67 percent to 12.5 percent, restored noncompetitive leasing, and required 36 offshore lease sales through 2040. It also raised a carbon-capture credit that can support enhanced oil recovery from $60 to $85 per metric ton.

The administration separately directed federal agencies to restrict wind and solar development while encouraging more oil, natural gas, and coal production.

That is not the federal government stepping away from energy subsidies. It is the federal government choosing which industries to support. In my view, withdrawing help from families who want to own part of their energy supply and contribute to cleaner air and water, while expanding support for fuels that must be extracted, transported, and purchased again and again, is destructive energy policy. Massachusetts has long recognized that reducing fossil-fuel consumption is not only about energy costs; it is also about protecting the air we breathe, the water we depend on, and the communities where we live.

That is why Massachusetts leadership matters so much now.

Massachusetts turned policy into a local solar market

Massachusetts has repeatedly used policy to make solar more accessible. In 2008, the Commonwealth had only about 3 megawatts of installed solar. That year it launched Commonwealth Solar with $68 million in existing renewable-energy funds and passed the Green Communities Act. Net metering gave homes credit for electricity sent to the grid. The Solar Carve-Out, SRECs, SMART, state tax incentives, education, and workforce programs helped turn an unfamiliar technology into a functioning residential market.

By 2024, Massachusetts had 3,939 megawatts AC of solar, roughly 1,300 times the rounded 2008 starting point.

I know what those policies meant on the ground. The renewable-energy program at Greenfield Community College gave me a path into a new field. State programs helped early customers make the numbers work. Those customers gave local companies projects on which to learn, hire, and improve. Each completed home made the next conversation easier because solar was no longer theoretical. It was working on a neighbor's roof.

Massachusetts policy has never been perfect, and no incentive should continue unchanged forever. Programs require honest review, consumer protection, and attention to who pays and who benefits. But the record is clear: the Commonwealth made deliberate choices that helped solar move from a specialty product toward a normal household investment.

The Senate's latest energy bill continued that tradition. As I explained in the previous post, it would help more families finance solar and batteries, preserve important clean-energy tools, strengthen consumer protections, and establish a statewide smart-permitting platform for routine residential systems.

The House and Senate versions remain in conference committee. The smart-permitting language is therefore not yet law. But Massachusetts is asking the right question: now that solar technology is mature, how do we protect consumers and remove costs that do not improve the finished system?

A market that grew from 3 megawatts to 3,939 megawatts did more than add panels. It built local companies, training programs, and a skilled workforce.

A growing market created jobs, skills, and lower costs

The solar cost story is also a labor story. The latest comparable national Solar Jobs Census counted 280,119 workers in 2024, almost exactly three times the 93,502 counted in 2010.

Massachusetts ranks second nationally in clean-energy jobs as a share of total state employment. MassCEC reported that the state’s solar industry added 520 jobs, or 3 percent, between its 2023 and 2024 report years. Clean-energy employment in the Pioneer Valley grew 9 percent over the same period, making the industry’s growth visible here in Western Massachusetts.

Those jobs include electricians, designers, engineers, project managers, administrators, educators, inspectors, service technicians, and operations staff. At Northeast Solar, the labor story is personal. It is our crews and project staff, and it is the next student walking into a Western Massachusetts classroom looking for useful work.

Experience also lowers cost. A trained team makes fewer mistakes. A clear design moves faster. A company that understands local utility and town requirements can keep a project from stalling. Quality and affordability are not opposites when the work is organized well.

The next residential cost breakthrough may be a permit

As panel prices fell, non-hardware costs became a larger share of the residential price. The Department of Energy says these "soft costs" account for about two-thirds of the overall cost of a U.S. residential solar system.

Soft costs include design, sales, financing, installation labor, interconnection, insurance, and business overhead. One online form will not remove two-thirds of a project's price. But permitting is one of the clearest costs government can reduce directly.

Northeast Solar works across Franklin, Hampshire, Hampden, and Berkshire counties. We can submit essentially the same safe, code-compliant residential design to different towns and encounter different applications, document formats, fee schedules, review sequences, and response times. The system still gets engineered correctly. The electrician still follows the code. The inspector still verifies the work. The variation is in the paperwork and waiting.

Waiting has a cost. Staff must track applications, answer repetitive questions, revise formats, reschedule crews, and explain delays to homeowners. Municipal staff also spend time reviewing routine details that software can check consistently.

Standardized permitting does not eliminate local oversight or weaken safety. It creates one clear route for ordinary, code-compliant residential solar and battery projects while sending unusual cases to a person for review.

The national SolarAPP+ experience shows what that can accomplish. NREL’s latest performance review found that code-compliant projects using the automated platform were permitted and inspected 12 business days sooner than projects using traditional permitting in 2024.

A strong Massachusetts system should provide:

one consistent residential application;
automated code checks and immediate approval for routine systems;
human review for exceptions and complicated homes;
transparent, proportionate fees; and
coordination among permitting, inspection, and utility interconnection.

If statewide smart permitting becomes law and is implemented well, it can reduce administrative work for installers and towns, shorten the wait for homeowners, and put downward pressure on project prices. It will not transform every quote overnight. It will remove a real and unnecessary layer of friction.

Early policy helped create the market. The next generation of policy should remove unnecessary process and make that market work better. Lowering process costs makes solar more affordable; planning what that solar will power makes it more valuable.

Cheap solar became the foundation for the whole home

When Northeast Solar began, the main challenge was getting more solar onto roofs and helping people understand why it worked. Today, the larger household problem is that energy arrives through several disconnected bills.

A family may buy electricity from a utility, oil or propane for heat, and gasoline for a car. Each cost changes on its own schedule, and the pieces were rarely planned together.

Less expensive solar changed what was possible. Solar could become the household's generating asset. A mini-split could move heating and cooling toward efficient electricity. A battery could store energy and keep selected loads operating during an outage. An EV charger could replace gasoline miles with electricity. Controls could help the pieces work together.

That is why we became a complete energy-stack company. We did not expand because solar became less important. We expanded because solar became useful enough to support a larger residential strategy.

Our Power Plan begins with the home, not a product. We look at present energy use, what the roof can produce, how the home is heated, which equipment is nearing the end of its life, what resilience the family needs, and what sequence of investments makes sense.

Not every house needs every technology, and not every project should happen at once. Accessibility also means helping a homeowner identify the right first step and avoid paying for something that does not solve the actual problem.

What twenty years prove

The proof is the twenty-year record we can see here. IRENA’s module-price benchmark fell 97 percent. A residential system that cost about $10 to $12 per watt when I began installing solar now costs roughly $2.80 to $4.00 per watt at Northeast Solar. Massachusetts grew from about 3 megawatts of solar in 2008 to 3,939 megawatts in 2024. Over a similar period, default utility-supply rates in Western Massachusetts rose roughly 39 to 48 percent. Solar became less expensive while purchased electricity became more expensive, and households that owned solar protected the portion of their energy produced on their roofs.

That result took better technology, public policy, skilled labor, and homeowners willing to go first. Federal incentives lowered the initial barrier. Massachusetts built a durable state market through net metering, SRECs, SMART, education, and other programs. Workers turned equipment and policy into real systems, and early customers showed their neighbors that the technology worked.

Now the challenge is different. We have to make residential solar simpler to buy, finance, permit, connect, and coordinate with the rest of the home. Standardized permitting and broader financing point in the right direction because the next gains in accessibility will come from improving the system around the panel.

When I entered this field in 2008, solar was still something many people had to be convinced was practical. Today, I can stand in my own home, watch the panels carry the mini-splits on a hot day, and see what the industry became.

The electricity is local. The operating cost is predictable. The equipment belongs to the household. And when solar, heating, storage, and transportation are planned together, a family can control far more of its energy future than it could twenty years ago.

That is the opportunity Northeast Solar grew up with. It is also the work ahead: keep lowering the barriers, keep the standards high, and make the benefits available to more of our neighbors.

If you want to understand what that path looks like for your home, start with the whole picture. We will help you look at your electricity, heating, resilience, and future needs, then decide what makes sense and in what order.

Sources and further reading

Why Northeast Solar

We’ve been doing this for 15 years, right here in Western Massachusetts. Over 1,500 systems installed across Franklin, Hampshire, Hampden, and Berkshire Counties. Local crews. Local investment.

We’re the only installer in the region that offers solar, battery storage, mini-splits, and EV charging under one roof. We don’t just sell panels. We build a Personal Power Plan designed around your home, your usage, and your goals.

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