Costs & savings

How much do solar panels cost in Australia?

Roughly $1,000 per kW installed, with the federal rebate already taken off. A 6.6 kW system typically lands between $5,000 and $8,500; a 10 kW system averages about $10,000. The part worth understanding is why identical systems quote $7,000 at one company and $20,000 at another.

7 min read · Last verified 2026-08-15

The 30-second take

Australian solar is usually priced at roughly $1,000 per kW installed, with the STC rebate already deducted from the number you’re shown.
6.6 kW — about $5,000 to $8,500 for good components and an installation built to last (Solar Calculator, 2026).
10 kW — averaged around $10,000 fully installed across 853 prices reported by Australian owners (SolarQuotes, 2026).
Real prices paid for that same 10 kW ranged from $7,000 to $20,000, and the market leader attributes the spread primarily to which installer you choose.
Ask one question before comparing any two quotes: is the rebate already included in this price?

The short answer

Solar in Australia is normally quoted per kilowatt of panel capacity, and the working number in 2026 is about $1,000 per kW fully installed. On that basis a 6.6 kW system — still the most common residential size — sits between $5,000 and $8,500 for decent components and a proper installation, and a 10 kW system averages around $10,000.

Those figures already have the federal rebate deducted. Australian installers almost always advertise the after-rebate price, which is why our prices look so much lower than American ones. It also means a quote that looks $3,000 cheaper may simply be a quote that has applied the rebate differently, so confirm it explicitly.

What each size costs, and who it suits

System size is set by your roof, your budget and how much electricity you actually use during daylight hours. As a rough map:

6.6 kW — about $5,000 to $8,500. The default for a typical household. Pairs with a 5 kW inverter, fits most roofs, and covers daytime usage for a family that isn’t running much heavy load.
10 kW — around $10,000 on average. Suits bigger homes, ducted air conditioning, a pool, an electric vehicle, or anyone planning to add a battery later. Check your network’s export limit before committing.
13 kW and above — priced per kW on the same basis. Larger arrays are usually driven by an EV, a heat pump, or a plan to electrify the whole house. Three-phase supply changes the inverter options and the price.
Adding a battery is a separate line item entirely, typically several thousand dollars on top with its own federal rebate. We cover that in the battery cost guide.

Why the same system quotes $7,000 and $20,000

This is the number that matters more than the average. Across those 853 reported 10 kW installations, people paid anywhere from $7,000 to $20,000 — a spread of nearly three times for what is nominally the same size system. SolarQuotes, which collected the data, names the installer you choose as the number one factor behind the differential.

Some of the gap is genuine hardware quality: panels and inverters vary in efficiency, degradation rate and warranty backing. But a large part of it is the business behind the install — whether the crew is employed or subcontracted at the lowest bid, whether the mounting hardware suits your roof, whether the switchboard work is done properly, and whether anyone will still be trading when you need a warranty claim honoured.

“The same 10 kW system was bought for $7,000 and for $20,000. The biggest single variable behind that spread is which installer you chose — not which panel.”

What is actually in the price

A solar quote is not a shopping list of panels. Roughly seven things are being priced, and cheap quotes get cheap by trimming the ones you cannot see from the ground.

Panels. Usually the line people focus on, and rarely the line that decides whether the system is still performing in year 12.
Inverter. The component that does the hard work every day and the one most likely to need replacing first. Quality here is worth paying for.
Mounting and racking. Rails, feet and flashings sized for your roof type and local wind rating. Corrosion-prone hardware on a coastal roof is a false economy.
Labour and electrical work. The install crew, the DC and AC cabling, isolators, and making it all compliant.
Switchboard and metering. Older switchboards often need an upgrade before solar can be connected. This is a common surprise cost — get it confirmed in writing before you sign.
Grid application and paperwork. Your installer applies to the network for permission to connect and export, and handles the rebate paperwork.
Aftercare. Monitoring setup, fault response, and someone who answers the phone in year four. It costs money to provide, which is exactly why the cheapest quote usually doesn’t.

What a very cheap quote usually leaves out

A cheap install is only cheap until something goes wrong. The pattern in Australian solar complaints is consistent: the saving is taken up front, and the cost arrives in year three or year five, when the inverter fails, the monitoring stops reporting, or the company that installed it no longer exists under that name.

The Clean Energy Regulator inspected 1,278 home battery installations between July 2025 and April 2026 and classified more than 60% as substandard and 1.2% as unsafe. Most of those systems used reputable hardware. The failure was in the installation, which is the part of the price a discount quote is most likely to have cut.

How to compare cost quotes properly

Two quotes are only comparable when four things match. Line them up before you look at the total.

Same system size and inverter capacity. A 6.6 kW array on a 5 kW inverter is not the same product as 6.6 kW on a 6 kW inverter.
Same rebate treatment. Both prices after STCs, or both before. Mixing the two makes one quote look thousands cheaper than it is.
Same warranty terms in writing. Product warranty, performance warranty and workmanship warranty are three different things, and the last one is the one that depends on the installer still existing.
Same exclusions. Ask each installer what is not included — switchboard upgrade, meter change, tile replacement, difficult access, three-phase work. The cheapest quote is often the one with the longest exclusion list.

You don’t need twelve solar quotes to do this. You need a small number of quotes from installers who would still be worth buying from if the prices were identical. Get matched with 2-3 quality solar installers who meet the Solar Select standard, ask all of them the four questions above, and let them compete on the comparison rather than on the discount.

Sources

Every quantitative claim on this page traces to one of the sources below — government, manufacturer, or independent AU industry reference. Last verified 2026-08-15.

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