About

Watt Decoded covers residential solar costs, incentives, and equipment choices at the
state level. Most published cost estimates for solar are national averages, which flatten
out exactly the variables that determine what a system actually costs and how it performs:
local labor rates, permitting fees, incentive stacking rules, climate-driven degradation,
and inverter or battery behavior under real operating conditions rather than lab
specifications.

Pages on this site work through those variables individually rather than compressing them
into a single average figure. Where a sizing or equipment recommendation depends on a
tradeoff — cost versus resilience, upfront price versus long-term degradation — that
tradeoff is stated explicitly so the reader can weigh it against their own situation,
rather than being handed a single answer.

State and incentive pages are dated and revised when the underlying policy or pricing
changes. If something on this site looks out of date, that’s a signal to check the page’s
last-revised date before relying on it.