(Worked in the residential solar industry on and off almost 10 years) Financing providers, sales commissions, and profit + operating margins of the typical end

(Worked in the residential solar industry on and off almost 10 years) Financing providers, sales commissions, and profit + operating margins of the typical end-to-end residential solar sales and installation company make up a large portion of the price. What you're really paying for is convenience and expertise to understand the equipment, hire/train personnel, and jump through local - often arcane municipal requirements. However if you measure your roof and can can find a freelance designer to draft up some CAD drawings that can get approved through your local municipality, buy the equipment yourself, and hire a crew + electrician to install it direct - you'll save quite a bit - at least 5-20k depending system size. Its more leg work, but you save enough its probably worth it. The install crew, electrician and CAD designer are the only real experts you might want to hire in for. The rest is paperwork, sales, and financing. A pretty common $/watt is about $3.5-5/watt. Expect < $2.5/watt if you're cutting out sales and financing - doing more of the process yourself. The other metric to look at is your estimated and actual production/panel ratio. You have flat costs on equipment but depending on where that panel is on your roof (based on shading, exposure, azimuth, etc) you might get less or more for your buck. The math is costs/month based on your financing taking into account expected production (plug numbers into a tool like https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/). A good production/panel ratio can significantly affect your ability to collect savings. I emphasize production/panel because most of these Solar Sales companies pay their sales guy on a per/watt rate where bigger is better, not necessarily efficiency and financial benefit for the customer. This can incentivize them to push for panels in places on your roof where they'll hardly produce - adding to the overall cost of the system something that is good for them and not necessarily for you. If you have the documents and can put good numbers together you can likely get financing through your local bank directly - or imo just pay cash if you can. Avoid PPAs, stick to loans with good rates or cash. A really common bottleneck at these solar installation companies is either 1. permitting, or later on: inspections and interconnection approval (City/Municipality + Power Co.). The shadier solar companies can technically get paid by the financing provider prior to a customer's system being fully inspected and interconnected with the grid. This doesn't always give them in incentive to bring the project to a closure as they've already gotten paid and any additional work is a truck roll, technician hours, and troubleshooting - even if it leaves the customer without a producing system and monthly payments.