Solar Cost in Everett, WA 2026: ~23.8–37.6-Yr Payback

Why this number

Everett produces 999 kWh per kW — the lowest figure anywhere in this dataset, and the only one under 1,000. Seattle, 25 miles south in the same metropolitan area, manages 1,086. Like for like, that 8% production gap alone is worth 1.3 years of payback. The 23.8–37.6-year range shown here is priced on Everett’s own utility — Snohomish County PUD at 11.51¢/kWh, whose export rule we could not verify — and that open question, not the cloud, is what stretches the top of the range.

No state-level page can show you that, and neither can a metro-level one.

The Puget Sound convergence zone

Air flowing east off the Pacific splits around the Olympic Mountains, then rejoins over Puget Sound. Where the two streams collide they are forced upward, and that band of forced ascent produces persistent cloud and drizzle. It typically sets up over southern Snohomish County — over Everett, Lynnwood and Mukilteo — while Seattle, twenty-odd miles south, sits in the clear.

It is a real, repeatable, geographically fixed feature. Local forecasters name it on air. And it means the answer to ‘how much will solar make on my roof in the Seattle area’ genuinely depends on which side of the county line the roof is on.

Your utility, officially

Washington’s average residential rate is 14.7¢/kWh, but the bill in Everett comes from PUD No 1 of Snohomish County at 11.51¢ — 22% below the state figure. These are the residential figures Everett’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:

One thing we could not verify with PUD No 1 of Snohomish County is its export rule, which is why the payback above is a range: ask the utility directly whether you get full-retail net metering or a lower export credit , because that one answer picks your end of the range.

Everett’s electricity comes from Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County, and the name describes the structure exactly: a PUD is Washington’s third flavor of public power, distinct from both a city department like Seattle City Light and an investor-owned company like Puget Sound Energy. PUDs are consumer-owned utility districts created under state law, governed by commissioners the ratepayers elect, and organized around a county rather than a city. Snohomish PUD serves 346,532 residential customers — nearly twice Tacoma Power’s count — at a 2024 EIA-861 average of 11.51¢/kWh, the second-cheapest rate of any utility on this site.

That price sits at the center of Everett’s solar problem, and it compounds the one this page already documents. The convergence-zone cloud gives Everett the weakest production in our Washington set; the PUD’s cheap, hydro-rich power means each kilowatt-hour that production offsets is worth less than almost anywhere else in the country. The page’s payback model uses the state-average rate, so an Everett reader should mentally stretch the already-long headline number further: at 11.51¢ against a state average of 14-15¢, the true bill savings run roughly a quarter lower than modeled. Weak numerator, weak denominator.

On exports: Washington’s full-retail statute, RCW 80.60, is written broadly enough that public utilities in the state operate net-metering programs under it — Tacoma’s municipal utility cites the chapter on its own solar page. But we could not verify Snohomish PUD’s pages directly; the utility’s website refused our automated requests, and we will not describe program terms we have not read. Treat the specifics — how exports are credited, whether a credit bank exists, what happens to balances at the annual reset, any solar-specific charges — as unconfirmed until you have read them on the PUD’s own site or heard them from its staff. An elected-commission utility can also revise those terms locally, without a state rate case, which cuts both ways: responsive to residents, quick to change.

One more data note: the 2024 EIA net-metering file we use carries no residential net-metering row for the PUD, so no federal adoption count exists to report for Everett. Between an unverifiable program page and an unreported federal figure, Everett is the city on our list where “call your utility first” is not a disclaimer — it is the actual first step.

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.

Washington is not one solar market

Across the 6 Washington cities with their own modeled figures, production spans 32% — Everett at 999 kWh per kW to Yakima at 1,320. Every column except production is identical down this table: same 14.7¢/kWh retail rate, same export regime, same $2.55/W installed cost. The payback differences are caused by weather and nothing else.

Against the state figure, Everett runs 4.4% below Washington’s 1,045 kWh per kW — a payback 5.3 years longer than the statewide 18.5-year estimate on the same hardware at the same price.

An 8 kW system in Everett, priced out

Only the first two rows differ. Everything financial — rate, tariff, price per watt — is inherited from Washington 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 Everett array would produce, with rates rising at 2.5% a year, comes to roughly $36,139.

Electricity isn’t only for panels — the heat pump vs. furnace cost calculator compares heating costs at Everett’s own 14.7¢/kWh rate.

Run it with your own bill