Comparing Solar Quotes in New York

A homeowner who collects three solar proposals in New York typically ends up with three documents that share almost no structure. One leads with a monthly payment. One leads with a total system price. One leads with twenty-five years of projected savings. The equipment is described differently in each, and the production estimates disagree.

They are comparable, but only after being rewritten onto a common set of fields. Anyone reading new york state solar reviews looking for a shortcut will find that the shortcut does not exist — the useful work is normalising the numbers yourself. Four fields do most of it.

Field one: price per watt, before incentives

The single most useful normalisation is dividing gross system cost by system size in watts.

A quote for a 7.2 kW system at a given total is not comparable to a quote for a 9.6 kW system at a different total until both are expressed per watt. Systems are sized differently by different companies for the same house, sometimes because of genuinely different roof plans and sometimes because a larger system produces a larger commission.

Use the gross price — before any tax credit or other incentive. That isolates what the company is charging for hardware and labour, which is the part they control. Incentives are applied afterwards, and the state credit follows the same rules whichever company you choose.

Two related traps. First, make sure the system size is DC watts of panel capacity in every quote, not AC inverter capacity in some and DC in others. Second, check what is included: some quotes carry a main panel upgrade, roof work or a battery that another quote leaves out entirely.

Field two: the actual make and model of panels and inverters

“Tier 1 panels” and “premium equipment” are not specifications. A quote should name the panel manufacturer and model, the wattage per panel, the number of panels, and the inverter manufacturer and model.

The inverter choice matters more than most homeowners expect, because it is the component most likely to need attention during the system’s life and because the architecture affects how the array performs.

A string inverter is a single unit, generally cheaper, with a shorter warranty than the panels. Microinverters sit under each panel and typically carry longer warranties. Power optimisers pair panel-level electronics with a central inverter. On a shaded or complex New York roof — dormers, chimneys, neighbouring buildings — panel-level electronics can matter meaningfully; on a clean south-facing roof the case is weaker.

If two quotes differ by a few thousand dollars and one uses microinverters while the other uses a string inverter, that is a substantial part of the explanation, and it is not a straightforward case of one being overpriced.

Field three: the first-year production estimate and its assumptions

Every proposal states an annual kWh figure. It is the number most likely to be quietly optimistic, because it drives every savings projection downstream and nothing forces it to be conservative.

The figure alone is not comparable. What makes it comparable is the assumptions behind it: the modelling tool, the assumed tilt and orientation, the shading analysis, the annual degradation rate, and whether snow and soiling losses were modelled.

Two useful cross-checks. Divide estimated annual kWh by system size in kW to get a specific yield. If one quote’s yield is far above the others for the same roof, ask why — the answer is usually a more generous shading assumption or an omitted loss factor. And ask whether a physical site survey or shade measurement was done, or whether the design came from satellite imagery alone.

A production figure that has not been checked against your own consumption is also incomplete. Twelve months of utility bills tell you how much electricity the household actually uses, and a system sized well past that runs into the limits of how net metering in New York credits exports.

Field four: three warranties, not one

“25-year warranty” on a proposal cover page describes nothing, because at least three separate warranties apply and they run for different periods against different parties.

The panel product warranty covers manufacturing defects. The panel performance warranty covers output degrading faster than a stated curve. The inverter warranty is usually shorter than the panel warranty and varies considerably by inverter type. The workmanship warranty covers the installation itself — roof penetrations, mounting, wiring, labour — and is the installer’s own obligation rather than a manufacturer’s.

Record all four terms separately for each quote. The workmanship warranty is where quotes diverge most, and it is the one that depends on the company still existing. Our warranties guide goes through what each covers and what New York weather demands of an installation.

Quotes for different ownership models are not comparable at all

One structural point that defeats the four-field method: a cash purchase, a loan, a lease and a power purchase agreement are different transactions, and lining up their monthly numbers side by side is misleading.

A purchase quote has a price. A loan quote has a price plus financing terms, and the dealer fee embedded in a low advertised rate is often invisible. A lease has a monthly payment, frequently with an annual escalator. A PPA has a per-kWh rate for power produced, also frequently escalating.

The only honest comparison across models runs on total cost over the contract term against expected production, and even then the ownership differences — who claims what, what happens at sale, who maintains the system — do not reduce to a number. Lease versus buy in New York and how solar loans are structured cover those separately.

Incentives belong at the end, not the top

Incentives should be applied after the comparison, not baked into the headline.

When a NY-Sun block is open, the per-watt incentive is claimed by a participating contractor and reflected in the installed price. As of September 2026 NYSERDA has no open NY-Sun block for homes in any utility territory; check NYSERDA’s NY-Sun dashboard for a new one. Until one opens, a home quote should carry no NY-Sun line unless the household has NYSERDA income-eligibility approval for Long Island’s Affordable Solar incentive, which is not tied to a block; any other NY-Sun line should name the block it is claimed against.

New York’s state credit for solar energy system equipment is a percentage of system cost up to a statutory cap, claimed on Form IT-255 with the state return. It does not reduce the price the contractor charges; it arrives at tax time.

The federal credit is where quotes go wrong most often. The 30% residential clean energy credit under section 25D of the Internal Revenue Code was terminated for expenditures made after 31 December 2025 by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed 4 July 2025. An expenditure counts as made when the original installation is completed, so a system finished in December 2025 but switched on in January 2026 still falls under the old rules. A homeowner buying a system with cash or a loan and placing it in service in 2026 receives no federal credit on their own return — no phase-down, no transition. Any quote showing a 30% federal line for a purchase in 2026 is overstating the net cost benefit by a large margin.

Systems whose installation was completed in 2025 were under the old rules, and unused credit from that year can generally be carried forward.

A separate business-side federal credit still applies to the company that owns a leased or PPA system. That is a real incentive, but the homeowner never claims it. It is also why the tax comparison between buying and third-party ownership now looks different than it did before 2026.

What the spread usually turns out to be

Once three quotes sit on the same grid, the differences generally resolve into a small number of causes.

Different system size for the same house. Different inverter architecture. Different scope — one quote includes an electrical panel upgrade the others assumed away. Different production assumptions rather than different roofs. Different financing embedded in a monthly figure. And a genuine difference in what the company charges for its labour and overhead.

Only the last of those is what most people think they are comparing when they ask for three quotes.

Frequently asked questions