Solar Panel Cost in New Hampshire: $2.89/W, 17.1-Yr Payback

Solar in New Hampshire costs about $23,120 for 8 kW at $2.89/W and pays back in roughly 17.1 years at 26.6¢/kWh with the federal credit at $0.

Updated September 2026 · Source: EIA Electric Power Monthly Table 5.6.A (July 2026 data) · next EIA update ~Oct 23

By SolarCostData Data Desk · Reviewed September 2026 · Corrections log

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Why this number

Solar panels in New Hampshire cost about $2.89 per watt — $23,120 for a typical 8 kW system — and pay back in roughly 17.1 years at the state’s 26.6¢/kWh average rate, with the 2026 federal credit at $0. Net billing pays exports below retail here.

Everything below uses New Hampshire’s real average residential electricity rate (26.6¢/kWh, EIA) and a production band of about 1,220 kWh per kW per year. Both are stated openly because they are the two inputs that decide the answer. These are estimates for sanity-checking a quote, not a quote.

Run it with your own numbers

Why New Hampshire’s payback lands where it does

New Hampshire’s rate leapt about seventeen percent this year, from 22.79 cents per kilowatt-hour in July 2025 to 26.6 cents this July, one of the sharper single-year moves in the model and enough to keep the state at rank 8 nationally. Combined with a modest 1,220 kilowatt-hour-per-installed-kilowatt yield, the payback comes out to about 17.1 years. Public Service Company of New Hampshire, the Eversource-owned utility and the state’s largest with nearly 460,000 residential customers, prices well under the state average at 18.7 cents, a gap wide enough that PSNH customers should expect a payback considerably longer than 17.1 years. The Community Power Coalition, by contrast, runs under 9 cents. New Hampshire compensates exports under net billing rather than full retail, so the fast statewide rate growth helps mainly through self-consumption, and matters most to homeowners on utilities pricing near the state average rather than well below it.

Electric utilities in New Hampshire

The state average hides real spreads between utilities. The largest residential utilities EIA-861 lists for New Hampshire, with each one’s own average bundled residential price (2024 — revenue ÷ sales, the audited annual figure, not this month’s tariff):

Your utility decides New Hampshire’s real number — the ZIP lookup finds it in three clicks; the 2024 annual utility averages above sit apart from the June-2026 monthly 26.6¢ state figure.

New Hampshire’s rate, the last 24 months

July 2025 → July 2026: 22.79¢ → 26.60¢. The rate tracker has every month against the US average.

An 8 kW system in New Hampshire, priced out

The $2.89/W used above comes from EnergySage marketplace quotes (August 2026). Those are quotes in a competitive online market, not signed contract prices.

For comparison, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Tracking the Sun reports $3.85/W for New Hampshire in 2025 (n=40) — 1.33x higher. The two measure different things: LBNL records prices actually reported to incentive programs, including dealer-fee financing and full retail channel costs, while EnergySage reflects what a price-sensitive online shopper is quoted. The real market median is probably between them. At the LBNL price this system would cost $30,800 and take about 21.3 years to pay back, against 17.1 at the quote-based figure — treat that as the upper case.

Read that table with one caveat: $2.89/W is New Hampshire’s market average, and it is the input most likely to differ for you. A quote $0.50 per watt above or below the $2.89 used here moves the payback by roughly a year and a half in either direction.

How much sun New Hampshire actually gets

A kilowatt of panels in New Hampshire produces about 1,220 kWh a year on an unshaded, south-facing roof at a 20-degree pitch. Sites that swap New Hampshire’s 1,220 kWh for a single national average are how Arizona and Washington end up with identical paybacks despite a 1.6x real difference in output.

That figure is a five-point cluster around New Hampshire’s largest metro area, which keeps it representative of where most people actually live rather than of the state’s best site.

Two adjustments matter before you apply this to your own roof:

• Shading and orientation. The 1,220 kWh figure assumes an unobstructed south-facing array. A real New Hampshire roof — its own azimuth and pitch, a tree or a chimney — typically produces 10-25% less; this page models 90% of the ideal, so the 8,784 kWh/year above is already derated from 9,760. A genuinely unshaded south roof can adjust upward in the calculator.
• Year-to-year weather moves output by roughly ±5% either way.

How New Hampshire compares with the other 49

New Hampshire ranks 8th of 50 on electricity price and 7th on annual output value per kW installed — close enough that its rate is a fair proxy for its solar case, which is not true everywhere. Its immediate neighbors on price are Rhode Island (28.3¢) just above and New Jersey (25.2¢) just below.

Connecticut is New Hampshire’s closest comparable-rate analogue — 24.2¢/kWh, roughly 1,235 kWh per kW, and a payback within about a year of this one (17.6 vs 17.1 years). If you find New Hampshire quotes hard to sanity-check, Connecticut numbers are broadly transferable.

Net billing: the rule that decides solar in New Hampshire

New Hampshire does not credit exports at the retail rate — this is net billing , not net metering. The program is Net Metering 2.0 (SB 129), in force since 2017, and it credits surplus power at an assumed 8.0¢/kWh, about 30% of retail, because no per-kWh figure is published — against a retail rate of 26.6¢.

Because a typical New Hampshire home uses only about 40% of its generation as it is produced, most of what the panels make is sold at 8.0¢. That is why the payback above is 17.1 years rather than the 9.6 years the same hardware would return under full-retail net metering. Raising self-consumption — a battery (worth its own arithmetic: is a home battery worth it? ), an EV charged in daylight, daytime occupancy — is the lever that closes the gap. Whether a New Hampshire buyer should own a battery or take a lease/TPO deal is priced in the battery buy vs. TPO calculator .

One limit worth knowing: this reflects investor-owned, state-regulated utilities; New Hampshire’s municipal utilities and co-ops are exempt in most cases and set their own terms.

What is actually left in New Hampshire

The 30% federal credit ended for systems completed after December 31, 2025, so it is $0 here as everywhere. What remains is state, utility and local — and it varies far more than the federal rule ever did.

New Hampshire offers no state-level solar tax credit or rebate. Utility-level rebates, and the tax exemptions below, are where any remaining help comes from — those are set locally, so DSIRE and your own utility are the places to look.

Tax exemptions

New Hampshire has no state sales tax at all, so the question does not arise.

Property-tax treatment is a local decision — if the town adopts it; also covers storage. Ask your assessor before assuming either way.

If that list looks thin, it is — the solar incentives hub shows which states still put real money on the table, and where New Hampshire sits among them.

Is solar worth it in New Hampshire at 26.6¢/kWh?

New Hampshire pays because power is expensive, not because it is sunny. A 1,220 kWh/kW year is ordinary; a 26.6¢ rate is not. Every kilowatt-hour you stop buying is simply worth a lot here.

At a horizon that long, owning the roof is not the only route to cheaper power. Community solar versus rooftop walks through the subscription alternative — no roof, no loan, and no 17.1-year wait — which is worth reading before committing capital in a market like New Hampshire’s.

Two numbers put that in context. At New Hampshire’s rate, the electricity an 8 kW system would produce is worth about $1,355 a year, so the system costs roughly 17.1 years of that output to buy outright — a simple division, before costs. The headline 17.1-year figure above is the full model: it additionally counts 2.5%/yr rate inflation, $150/yr of running costs and one inverter replacement, which is why the two differ slightly. And doing nothing is not free: 25 years of that same electricity, with rates rising at 2.5% a year, comes to about $79,827.

For a 15-year payback in New Hampshire — given its sunshine rather than a national average — the electricity rate would need to be about 17.9¢/kWh. New Hampshire is at 26.6¢, which is comfortably above that line.

Sources and method

• Electricity rate: U.S. Energy Information Administration, average price by state — EIA Table 5.6.A, July 2026 data (released Sep 2026). Rate shown is New Hampshire’s residential average.
• Production: PVGIS v5.2 with the PVGIS-NSRDB radiation database, 1,220 kWh/kW for a five-point cluster around New Hampshire’s largest metro, then the 90% real-roof factor; the assumptions, the ERA5 cross-check and the attribution are on the methodology page .
• Incentives: DSIRE — Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency, NC Clean Energy Technology Center. Verify current amounts and fund status before relying on them.
• Federal credit status: IRS, Residential Clean Energy Credit . See our 2026 energy tax credit guide .
• Payback model: shared with the solar savings calculator — 2.5%/yr utility inflation, 0.5%/yr degradation, federal credit $0.

New Hampshire’s rate (26.6¢, EIA Table 5.6.A, July 2026 data (released Sep 2026)), export regime, production factor, installed cost and programs were last verified on 25 September 2026; New Hampshire’s export credit resets on its tariff cycle and incentive budgets run out mid-year, so confirm current terms before acting. Not tax or financial advice.

Frequently asked questions

How we calculated this

Worked for New Hampshire: 8 kW × 1,000 × $2.89/W = $23,120 gross (federal credit $0, so net before state incentives); 8,784 kWh a year × the blended kWh value at 26.6¢ retail and 8.0¢ export ≈ $1,355 year-1 saving; payback ≈ $23,120 ÷ $1,355 = 17.1 years with 2.5%/yr rate growth, 0.5%/yr degradation and one inverter replacement in the 25-year model.

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.

States with a comparable tariff picture

• Why is my electric bill so high? — Splits a bill jump into weather, rate and usage — with New Hampshire’s own EIA rate history built in.
• Heat pump crossover temperature — Cold-zone question: the outdoor temperature where gas beats a NEEP-listed heat pump at New Hampshire’s rates.
• Cost to heat a home in New Hampshire — Gas, propane, heating oil, heat pump and resistance per MMBtu at New Hampshire’s own EIA winter prices — the heating side of the same rate.
• Electricity rate tracker — New Hampshire’s last 24 months of EIA rates, charted against the US average.
• Find your rate by ZIP — New Hampshire averages hide utility gaps — look yours up from EIA-861 in three clicks.
• Net metering by state (2026 table) — Every state’s export regime with program, date and source — the rule behind New Hampshire’s payback.
• Solar panel cost in Connecticut — Same export regime at 24.2¢/kWh and a 17.6-year payback — the closest tariff comparison to New Hampshire.
• Solar panel cost in Vermont — Same export regime at 23.8¢/kWh and a 15.4-year payback — the closest tariff comparison to New Hampshire.
• Solar panel cost in Michigan — Same export regime at 23.1¢/kWh and a 19.7-year payback — the closest tariff comparison to New Hampshire.