How Much Is Solar in Chicago, IL? $3.02/W, 31.3-Yr Payback
In Chicago, IL, an 8 kW system at $3.02/W produces about 1,235 kWh per kW and pays back in roughly 31.3 years at 13.39¢/kWh with the federal credit at $0.
· Source: EIA Electric Power Monthly Table 5.6.A (July 2026 data) · next EIA update ~Oct 23
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- Chicago production
- 1,235 kWh/kW/yr
- Illinois average
- 1,245 kWh/kW/yr
- Electricity rate
- 19.2¢/kWh
- 8 kW installed cost
- ~$24,160
- 2026 federal credit
- $0
- Payback (utility math)
- 31.3 years
Why this number
A kilowatt of panels in Chicago produces about 1,235 kWh a year, the lowest of the 3 Illinois cities modeled here — behind Springfield at 1,296, Rockford at 1,249. That is a payback of roughly 23.1 years against 22.2 years in Springfield, with the same electricity rate, the same export rule and the same installed price. The difference is entirely the sky.
What sets Chicago apart
The reference point for Illinois, held back by Great Lakes cloud in winter.
Your utility, officially
Illinois’s average residential rate is 19.2¢/kWh, but the bill in Chicago comes from Commonwealth Edison Co at 13.39¢ — 30% below the state figure. These are the residential figures Chicago’s utility reported to the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Form EIA-861 for 2024 — computed as revenue ÷ sales from the official file, not estimated:
| Utility | EIA ID | Residential avg price | Residential customers | Net-metering (residential, self-reported) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commonwealth Edison Co | 4110 | 13.39¢/kWh | 3,727,675 | 65704 customers / 479.24 MW |
How exports are treated matters as much as the headline price: Commonwealth Edison Co is modeled here under the state’s net billing rules, and that treatment is baked into every payback figure on this page.
Chicago’s utility question has a twist that the tidy table above can hide. Commonwealth Edison — investor-owned, a subsidiary of Exelon, 3,727,675 residential customers across northern Illinois — shows a 2024 EIA-861 average of 13.39¢/kWh, yet the Illinois modeling on this page uses a much higher statewide figure. Both are honest; they measure different things. Illinois is a retail-choice state: ComEd owns the wires and delivers every kilowatt-hour, but the supply portion of a bill can come from ComEd’s default service, an alternative retail supplier, or a municipal aggregation program. The EIA number reflects only what ComEd itself billed. Your full rate — delivery plus whoever supplies you — is the number that belongs in the calculator, and it is on your bill, not in any table.
The structural change that matters most happened recently. Through the end of 2024, Illinois net metering credited exports at the full retail rate, delivery charges included. Since January 1, 2025, new solar customers get supply-only netting: exports offset the energy portion of the bill but no longer erase delivery charges. Our Illinois page carries the details; ComEd’s own explanation of how it now credits generation is at comed.com . Any payback figure you were quoted before 2025, or any neighbor’s experience from the full-retail era, describes a program that no longer exists for new interconnections.
On rate structure, ComEd’s default residential supply is a flat per-kilowatt-hour price that adjusts periodically, with an optional program that prices electricity by the hour for customers who opt in; current pricing is published at comed.com . For a solar home under supply-only netting, the delivery charges you can no longer offset with exports become the fixed floor of your bill — which quietly raises the value of self-consumption relative to export, the same direction every state seems to be moving.
The scale of ComEd’s solar fleet is easy to underrate: 65,704 residential net-metering customers and 479.24 MW reported to EIA for 2024, an average of about 7.3 kW per system. That is one ComEd home in 57 — modest as a share, but in absolute terms a bigger residential fleet than Georgia Power and Sierra Pacific combined, built mostly in the full-retail years. The economics that built it have changed; the panels, of course, have not noticed.
Source: EIA Form EIA-861, 2024 final release , accessed 2026-09-02. Average price is total residential revenue divided by total residential sales for the year — your own rate depends on your tariff and usage tier.
Who else serves the metro
Chicago itself is almost entirely ComEd territory, but ComEd’s EIA-861 area sprawls across 24 counties, and other utilities show up on that list: Ameren Illinois at 11.8¢, Rock Energy Cooperative at 14.5¢, and Jo-Carroll Energy at 19.8¢. Against ComEd’s 13.39¢, that’s about a 1.6¢ edge over Ameren but a 6.4¢ climb to Jo-Carroll — a spread wide enough to change how fast a solar array pays for itself, since a different utility means a different rate and possibly a different net-metering rule than this page’s payback assumes. Illinois’s July 2026 state average, 19.22¢, is a separate, later figure. A property’s ZIP code, not its city name, determines the utility.
| Utility (EIA-861, same service counties) | 2024 avg residential price | Residential customers |
|---|---|---|
| Ameren Illinois Company | 11.8¢/kWh | 1,060,894 |
| Corn Belt Energy Corporation | 15.8¢/kWh | 34,710 |
| Rock Energy Cooperative | 14.5¢/kWh | 7,310 |
| Jo-Carroll Energy, Inc | 19.8¢/kWh | 17,227 |
The exact answer is a ZIP question, not a city question: look up your utility by ZIP . Candidates: utilities EIA-861 lists in 24 service counties of the metro’s main utility; prices are 2024 revenue ÷ sales from the official file.
Chicago against the rest of Illinois
Across the 3 Illinois cities with their own modeled figures, production spans 4.9% — Chicago at 1,235 kWh per kW to Springfield at 1,296. Every column except production is identical down this table: same 19.2¢/kWh retail rate, same export regime, same $3.02/W installed cost. The payback differences are caused by weather and nothing else.
| Location | kWh per kW per year | 8 kW output | Annual value | Payback |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Springfield | 1,296 | 9,331 kWh | $1,040 | 22.2 yrs |
| Rockford | 1,249 | 8,993 kWh | $1,002 | 22.9 yrs |
| Chicago (this page) | 1,235 | 8,892 kWh | $991 | 23.1 yrs |
| Illinois state average | 1,245 | 8,964 kWh | $999 | 23.0 yrs |
Against the state figure, Chicago runs 0.8% below Illinois’s 1,245 kWh per kW — a payback 8.3 years longer than the statewide 23.0-year estimate on the same hardware at the same price.
An 8 kW system in Chicago, priced out
| Metric | Estimate for Chicago | Illinois statewide |
|---|---|---|
| Production, unshaded 20° south | 1,235 kWh per kW/yr | 1,245 kWh per kW/yr |
| 8 kW output after a 10% roof derate | ~8,892 kWh/yr | ~8,964 kWh/yr |
| Average residential rate | 19.2¢/kWh (EIA) | 19.2¢/kWh |
| Installed cost, 8 kW | ~$24,160 at $3.02/watt | ~$24,160 |
| 2026 federal credit | $0 | $0 |
| Export rule | Net billing — exports credited below retail | Net billing — exports credited below retail |
| Export credit modeled | 5.77¢/kWh | 5.77¢/kWh |
| Annual value of that output | ~$991 | ~$999 |
| Rough payback (your utility) | 31.3 years | 23.0 years (state-average model) |
| 25-year net position | $1,789 | — |
Only the first two rows differ. Everything financial — rate, tariff, price per watt — is inherited from Illinois without change, which is the point: a city page that quietly used a different electricity rate from its state page would be guessing, not measuring.
Doing nothing is not free either. Twenty-five years of the electricity an 8 kW Chicago array would produce, with rates rising at 2.5% a year, comes to roughly $58,376.
Solar aside, the EV vs. gas cost calculator runs Chicago’s 19.2¢/kWh rate against what a gas car costs to fill instead.
Run it with your own bill
Shared methodology · identical on every city page
- Production figures are unshaded, south-facing, 20° PVGIS values. A real roof — its own pitch, orientation, a tree or a chimney — typically produces 10–25% less; every payback here already carries a 10% real-roof derate.
- Paybacks include $150/yr of running costs and one $2,000 inverter replacement in year 14, which is why they run longer than paybacks quoted elsewhere.
- State export rules cover investor-owned, state-regulated utilities. Municipal utilities and rural electric cooperatives are exempt in most states and set their own terms.
- Installed cost is the state-level EnergySage market figure, not a city quote; a swing of 50¢/W moves payback by roughly a year and a half either way. Get three quotes before trusting any payback — including ours.
Chicago against the rest of Illinois
Same rate, same export rule, same installed price per watt — only the sunshine changes:
| City | kWh per kW | Payback |
|---|---|---|
| Springfield | 1,296 | 22.2 years |
| Rockford | 1,249 | 22.9 years |
| Chicago | 1,235 | 23.1 years |
A 4.9% production span across one state is the reason a single statewide number is only ever a starting point.
What Illinois pays Chicago for exported power
Illinois does not credit exports at the retail rate, and that rule reaches Chicago unchanged. The program is supply-only net metering , in force since 2025-01-01, crediting surplus power at an assumed 5.8¢/kWh, about 30% of retail, because no per-kWh figure is published against a retail rate of 19.2¢.
Because a typical home uses only about 40% of its generation as it is produced, most of what a Chicago array makes is sold at that lower rate. That is why the payback above is 31.3 years and not the 14.5 years the same hardware would return under full-retail net metering. Raising self-consumption is the lever that closes the gap.
Sources and method
- Production: modeled with PVGIS v5.2 PVcalc (European Commission JRC) using the PVGIS-NSRDB radiation database — the same NREL satellite dataset PVWatts draws on for the Americas. Assumptions: 4 kWp, standard c-Si, 14% system loss, roof mounting, 20-degree tilt, due south, horizon shading on. The 1,235 kWh per kW figure for Chicago is a modeled location point, not an interpolation from the Illinois average. PVGIS is free to use with JRC attribution requested; the underlying NSRDB is public domain (NREL/DOE).
- Real-roof derate: a separate 10% deduction for azimuth, pitch and shading, applied in the shared model rather than folded into the production data — so you can adjust it if your roof is genuinely unobstructed.
- Electricity rate: U.S. Energy Information Administration, average price by state . This is Illinois’s residential average; EIA does not publish a Chicago figure, so the state rate is used and labeled as such.
- Export rules: supply-only net metering , from our Illinois state page and the shared export-rules dataset behind it.
- State average rate: EIA Table 5.6.A, July 2026 data (released Sep 2026), used for every state-average comparison on this page.
- Payback model: shared with the solar savings calculator and the state pages — 2.5%/yr utility inflation, 0.5%/yr degradation, $150/yr running costs, one $2,000 inverter replacement in year 14, federal credit $0. The rest of the toolset — battery, sizing, financing — is under all calculators .
- Incentives: DSIRE . City and utility programs change more often than state ones — check yours directly.
Electricity rate, export regime, production figure and installed cost on this page were last verified on 30 August 2026. Export credits reset on annual tariff cycles and incentive budgets run out mid-year, so treat every figure as a snapshot at that date and confirm current terms before acting. Nothing here is tax or financial advice.
Frequently asked questions
How much do solar panels cost in Chicago in 2026?
About $24,160 for a typical 8 kW system at $3.02 per watt, before any incentive. With the federal credit at $0 in 2026 that is close to your net cost. Note that the price per watt is a Illinois market average — there is no reliable city-level cost data, so treat it as a starting point and get three quotes.
What is the solar payback in Chicago?
Roughly 31.3 years on this model, using Chicago’s own production figure of 1,235 kWh per kW and its own utility tariff (13.39¢/kWh) with each utility’s real export treatment. That includes $150 a year of running costs and one inverter replacement, which many published paybacks leave out.
Is Chicago better or worse for solar than the rest of Illinois?
Against the state figure, Chicago runs 0.8% below Illinois’s 1,245 kWh per kW — a payback 8.3 years longer than the statewide 23.0-year estimate on the same hardware at the same price.
Is solar worth it in Chicago in 2026?
At 19.22¢/kWh and 1,235 kWh per kW, an 8 kW system in Chicago pays back in about 23.1 years on this model. Treat that as a starting point for reading real quotes rather than as a quote: your roof’s orientation, its shading and the price you are actually offered will move it more than your city does.
How we calculated this
Year-1 saving = production (kW × the city’s modeled kWh per kW) × the blended kWh value (retail rate for self-use, the state export rule for exports). Payback = net cost ÷ year-1 saving, with the federal credit at $0 for 2026 purchases and cost per watt from the state’s installed-price band. Production is modeled from PVGIS/NSRDB irradiance for the city.Sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) electricity rates · DSIRE incentive records · public IRS/OBBBA guidance. Figures are modeled estimates, not quotes or tax advice. See our methodology.
Compare with the rest of Illinois
- Solar panel cost in Illinois — The statewide picture: Illinois’s rate, incentives, export rules and the 1,245 kWh per kW average this page corrects.
- Solar panel cost in Springfield — 1,296 kWh per kW and a 22.2-year payback — better than Chicago on identical hardware.
- Solar panel cost in Rockford — 1,249 kWh per kW and a 22.9-year payback — better than Chicago on identical hardware.
- Solar panel cost in Detroit — 1,247 kWh per kW in Michigan — the closest production match to Chicago in our data.
- Solar panel cost in Springfield — 1,220 kWh per kW in Massachusetts — the closest production match to Chicago in our data.
- All city solar figures — The 66 US cities with their own modeled production data, and the spreads between them.