Paul Fenn October 26, 2026
The affordability of solar has still never been properly tested.
Solar’s competitiveness with conventional power becomes obvious when on-site energy systems supplant not merely the grid, but also heating and vehicles.
In recent years, electric technologies have hit the market that enable modular, interoperable power, heating, hot water, and vehicle systems to be energy independent.
Solar panels are dirt cheap, having dropped from over a hundred dollars per watt to pennies. EV manufacturers are making cars with bidirectional chargers, turning their batteries into energy storage, with the potential to minimize their impact on, and actually relieve, a congested power grid, while also maximizing on-site solar power that stays on in blackouts, eliminating fossil fuels.
How do we go from 5% of U.S. households with solar to 95%? Utilities should get out of the way. States must remove the obstacles they themselves created. Municipalities must actively promote measures to reduce solar soft costs, add value, and minimize fees and taxes.
Net metering is under attack, but solar is now so inexpensive that it no longer requires a corporate welfare system paid by taxpayers and ratepayers to beat fossil fuels.
The problem is no longer technology or even labor costs; it is middlemen. A codependency exists between government, “public” utilities, and industry: 70-80% of the average cost of U.S. rooftop solar today comes from “soft costs”: neither equipment nor labor but marketing, permits, and fees.
Read that again, and if you aren’t outraged, once again. Middleman-ism has become the big obstacle to solar normalization. Soft costs are excluding 95% of US buildings.
For decades we have been told that the energy transition is replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources. To succeed, the energy transition requires changing the energy user’s relationship to energy. DIY isn’t just about avoiding soft costs, professional installers, and financiers, but mastering energy technologies in the same way we’ve mastered computers and smartphones. Users should be able to use their own energy systems to capture benefits.
For many able-bodied Americans, DIY can avoid unnecessary labor costs and lower solar setup prices, especially for lower-income households that often cannot afford systems priced at three times the cost of equipment.
DIY is not just for off-grid systems. It is needed to normalize solar as an affordable presence in urban areas where nearly all energy is consumed. This dream has been in many ways supplanted by massive rural utility scale solar and grid-battery projects that feed the urban maw.
Because DIY can open up dense urban areas, it is the key to saving rural zones from wasteful investments in mega-infrastructure projects. Utility corporations love gigantic centralized projects because they ensure multi-decade revenue streams. Others hate them for industrializing the countryside and raising delivery charges.
Energy consumers and governments alike should learn from the DIY innovators in this issue who have entered the regulatory gray zone of semi-forbidden solar savoir-faire.
Governments should legalize, encourage, and actively facilitate DIY solar in place of punitive prohibitions and funding disqualifications. Regulators should require utilities to remove interconnection barriers and costly protocols for DIY solar systems. Solar permitting should be redesigned to actively support DIY permit applicants.
This first issue of Solar Today under our editorship is an effort to bring focus to perhaps the final frontier for the fulfillment of solar’s potential: systemic change.