Solar panel cost across South Carolina

What changed in South Carolina, and why older advice is wrong

Three things moved in sequence, and together they reset the arithmetic. One-for-one net metering closed to new applicants on 1 June 2021. Full-retail grandfathering for customers who applied before 16 May 2019 ran out on 31 December 2025. And the federal residential credit expired for systems placed in service on or after 1 January 2026.

The practical result is that payback in South Carolina is longer than the figures still published on national comparison sites, which mostly have not been updated. If you are working from an article that applies a 30% federal credit, the net cost it shows you is wrong by thousands of dollars. It is the first thing to check on anything you read, including a quote.

What did not change is the 25% South Carolina state credit on Form TC-38, capped at $3,500 in any one tax year and at 50% of your state liability, with a ten-year carry-forward. Because of that annual cap, most residential systems are claimed across two or three returns rather than recovered at once. Confirm your own eligibility with a tax professional.

None of this makes solar a bad decision here. It makes it a decision that has to be worked rather than assumed, and one where which utility bills you now matters more than it ever has.

Why a state average is the wrong number to plan with

South Carolina solar runs around $2.59 per watt installed before incentives as of July 2026. That figure is useful for sanity-checking a quote and useless for predicting your payback, because payback is decided by what your utility credits you for exported power and what you pay for the power you avoid buying.

Those two numbers vary more than the install price does. Myrtle Beach carries the lowest retail rate we work with at about 11.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, which lengthens payback because the power you displace is cheap to begin with, and it is also the one territory with a genuine upfront rebate, which shortens it. Dominion territory sits near 14.4 cents with no upfront rebate at all. Duke credits exports at only a few cents.

Over twenty-five years those are not small differences, and they run in different directions. A low retail rate with a rebate and a high retail rate without one can land in similar places or very different ones depending on how much of your own production you consume. That is why we show payback as a range against self-consumption rather than as one flattering number.

Reading a quote properly

Price per watt is the comparison that survives between quotes for different system sizes. Take the total installed price and divide by the system’s DC watts, then compare that against the benchmark above. A large gap in either direction is a question worth asking rather than a verdict.

Check whether a federal credit has been subtracted. Systems placed in service on or after 1 January 2026 do not qualify, and proposals built on older templates still net it out. This is currently the most common and most expensive error on competitor paperwork.

Check whether the state credit has been applied realistically. A 25% credit capped at $3,500 per tax year and at 50% of your liability is usually claimed over two or three returns. A quote showing the full credit as an immediate deduction is showing you a cash position you will not have in year one.

And look for dealer or financing fees folded into the headline. A cash price and a financed price for the same system are frequently not the same price, and the difference belongs in the comparison rather than in the small print.

How to use these pages

Start with your town rather than the state. Every page below is grouped by the utility that serves it, because that is the variable doing the most work, and a statewide average is a number that applies to nobody in particular.

Then check the assumption behind any figure you are comparing. Two quotes for a similar system can differ enormously on their twenty-five year totals purely because of what each assumed about export credits and rate escalation, and neither assumption is usually stated on the front page.

If your town is not listed, it is worth asking rather than assuming we do not cover it. We install statewide from a Daniel Island office, and the page list reflects where we have enough verified local detail to publish something useful rather than the limit of where we work.

What we need to give you a real number

Twelve months of electricity usage. Not one bill, twelve. A system sized from a summer peak is oversized for the year and one sized from a mild month disappoints every August, and neither error is visible until the system is on the roof. Twelve months also shows us the shape of your consumption across the day, which is what determines how much of your own production you will actually use rather than export.

Confirmation of who serves your meter, read off the bill rather than inferred from your address. In the Charleston metro especially, territory boundaries run between streets, and modelling the wrong provider produces a confident answer to the wrong question.

Some idea of your roof: its age, its covering, and whether anything has grown up around it since you moved in. Roof age is the detail that most often changes our recommendation, because installing over a roof with a few years left means paying to remove and reinstall the array later.

And your own horizon. A household planning to move within a few years is making a resale decision rather than a payback decision, and those are different questions with genuinely different answers. Telling us early saves everyone a survey.

With those four things we can give you figures rather than a projection built on averages. Without them, anyone quoting you a payback period is guessing with a straight face.

Common questions

How much do solar panels cost in South Carolina?

Around $2.59 per watt installed before incentives as of July 2026. That is a useful sanity check on a quote but a poor predictor of payback, which depends far more on what your utility credits exports at and what you pay for retail power.

Why does payback differ so much between towns?

Because retail and export rates differ. Myrtle Beach is about 11.4c per kWh (cheap power means a longer payback), but it is the one territory with a real upfront rebate. Dominion is near 14.4c with no rebate. Duke credits exports at only a few cents.

Can I still subtract the 30% federal credit?

Not for systems placed in service on or after 1 January 2026. It expired. Any quote still applying it is out of date by thousands of dollars, and this is the most common error we see on competitor paperwork.

How should I compare two solar quotes?

Compare price per watt rather than totals, check whether a federal credit has been wrongly subtracted, check the state credit is applied across tax years rather than as an immediate deduction, and look for dealer or financing fees folded into the headline.

Why do you show payback as a range?

Because it depends on how much of your production you use on site rather than export, and that varies by household. A single payback figure implies a precision that does not exist.