Solar Panels in Illinois: Costs, Incentives – NerdWallet

Earlier than any federal tax incentives, the typical value for photo voltaic panels in Illinois was $35,347 in the course of the second half of 2023. Illinois provides many incentive applications, along with federal tax incentives, for putting in photo voltaic panels.

Illinois Photo voltaic For All, for instance, helps low-income households add photo voltaic panels to their roofs, usually for no upfront value. Illinois Shines pays an incentive upfront by buying photo voltaic renewable vitality certificates (SRECs) from sure photo voltaic panel house owners. Attributable to these applications, photo voltaic panels are sometimes way more inexpensive and have a quicker payback charge than in lots of different states.

Photo voltaic prices in Illinois at a look

Prices and tendencies in Illinois

Photo voltaic panel system prices in Illinois are barely larger than the nationwide common, at $3.10 per kW in 2023. System sizes are additionally near the nationwide common. System sizes trended barely downward from early 2023 to the second half of the yr, from 11.8kW to 11.4kW, in accordance with EnergySage.

The Illinois Energy Company requires their authorised distributors to supply particular disclosure types about pricing [0]

Residential photo voltaic panel coverage in Illinois

Illinois has a Renewable Portfolio Commonplace that requires 25% of the state’s vitality to come back from renewable sources by 2025 [0]

Main investor-owned utilities supply web metering in Illinois. Internet metering is a billing mechanism that credit householders and companies for extra photo voltaic electrical energy they generate and ship to the ability grid. Rural electrical cooperatives and municipal electrical suppliers have barely totally different web metering insurance policies but additionally supply web metering.

“Internet metering insurance policies and charges for ComEd, Ameren and MidAmerican distributed era (on-site) residential and small industrial photo voltaic clients are altering beginning in 2025,” Audrey Steinbach, Senior Program Supervisor of Illinois Shines, stated in an electronic mail.

“At the moment, Illinois residents and small companies obtain a credit score on the ‘retail charge.’ That’s, all extra era despatched to the grid is compensated on the charge that buyer pays for distribution and provide from the utility,” Steinbach stated. “Techniques that obtain retail charge web metering will proceed to be credited at that charge for the lifetime of the system. Full retail web metering will not be out there to residential and small industrial clients interconnecting new renewable methods after December 31, 2024.”

Residential clients of ComEd, Ameren and MidAmerican can obtain a rebate of $300 per kW of DC energy in the event that they select to put in a wise photo voltaic inverter [0]

This program provides a path to rooftop photo voltaic that requires no preliminary cost up entrance and saves lower-income households cash all through the lifetime of the system. This system defines low-income households as these incomes 80% or much less of the Space Median Earnings [0]

The state points SRECs to photo voltaic suppliers that set up renewable vitality methods resembling residential photo voltaic. The photo voltaic suppliers then promote the SRECs to Illinois Shines, and so they could go the financial savings onto their clients. “Anecdotally, we’ve heard that REC incentives coated about 40% of set up prices,” stated Anthony Star, Chief of the Planning and Procurement Bureau on the Illinois Energy Company, in an electronic mail [0]

Vitality storage in Illinois

Photo voltaic batteries can deliver peace of thoughts that may include a battery backup, however they typically value 1000’s of {dollars}.

“Thus far in 2024, 3.9% of residential tasks which have been verified embody battery storage,” Star stated. “The applications administered by the IPA (Illinois Shines and Illinois Photo voltaic for All) don’t embody incentives for batteries. A rebate is obtainable by way of the utilities if a battery is included in an set up that features a sensible inverter. The present rebate degree is $300/kWh.”