The Going Rate For Solar is $9.87

One question about SolarCity that I've gotten a lot has been some variant of "how do I know that $7.90 per AC Watt is a good price?"

It turns out that there is a very informative page on the California Energy Commission's web site that let's anyone calculate the going rate for solar in their community.

If you go to that page, scroll down, and click on "Data Showing Approved and Completed Systems After January 1, 2005" you will get access to a huge Excel file. It contains size, pricing, location, and other data for every solar project in California (including solar thermal).

I extracted the data for systems installed in Mountain View in 2006 and 2007 that were between 2 and 4 kW. The median price was $9.87/AC watt and the average price was $9.80/watt over this sample of 22 systems. The graph below shows that price/watt seems to be the same no matter how large the system is (within this narrow range of 2-4 kW.)

The graph doesn't show up as clearly as I would like in this blog, but I would be happy to share the Excel file or the image on request.