What historic policy upheaval revealed about the home energy market in 2025

When Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) in July 2025 and eliminated the 30% federal tax credit for purchased residential solar panel systems, the market had just six months to react—and it did. 

With a hard deadline of December 31, 2025, homeowners didn’t hesitate. Most installers hit their annual capacity by October. Quote activity spiked on EnergySage. Equipment supply tightened. It was one of the most disruptive six-month stretches in home energy history—and the clearest real-world stress test we’ve seen of modern consumer demand for home electrification systems.

Our 22nd EnergySage Intel: Home Electrification Marketplace Report—the first to expand far beyond solar and storage to include full-home electrification—captures what happened in real time. Here’s what the data reveals.

When capacity is maxed out—as many solar installers experience in Q4 2025—and demand keeps climbing, prices are supposed to spike. But they didn't.

Solar prices rose just 0.4% across the second half of 2025. In Q3, as installers raced to sign contracts before the deadline, median quoted prices actually fell to an all-time low of $2.47/W. Prices ticked back up to $2.50/W in Q4, once most installers had filled their calendars—a result of a slight easing of hyper-competitive pricing, as installers no longer needed to fight for every job.

"When demand outweighs supply, that often results in panic pricing within any industry,” said Emily Walker, Director of Insights at EnergySage. "But marketplace transparency acted as a check on inflation: When buyers can see what competitive pricing looks like, it's hard for costs to spiral, even under historic demand."

Pricing discipline generally held, suggesting a more mature, competitive market than previous solar boom cycles. That said, stability at the median doesn't tell the whole story. The spread between the highest and lowest average quoted prices widened 24% from the first half of 2025 to the second, expanding from $0.58/W to $0.72/W. For an average-sized system, that's an $8,500 difference in total cost—the largest pricing gap EnergySage has ever recorded.

So what changed? Installers with full pipelines and limited remaining install slots exercised pricing power at the high end. Meanwhile, installers still competing to fill capacity kept prices sharp at the low end. This gap reflects the importance of comparing multiple quotes.

The rush to install created supply constraints and subsequent opportunities to gain Marketplace share, particularly in panels. The combined share of the top three panel brands fell from 64% to 49%, erasing years of steady market consolidation in a single reporting period. REC Group, the consistent panel leader on EnergySage, dropped from 43% to 20% Marketplace share. Meanwhile, Canadian Solar nearly tripled its share, and JA Solar increased more than sixfold.

Supply constraints didn't just reshuffle brands; they reshaped equipment recommendations.

For the first time in five years, quoted solar panel wattages shifted lower rather than higher. The dominant 450 to 460 W range fell from 33% to 26% of quotes, while the 430 to 440 W range jumped from 8% to 30%.

Installers weren't suddenly bullish on lower-wattage modules because they're superior. They were recommending what they could source reliably.

"Installers and homeowners became far more flexible about equipment to hit the tax credit deadline," Walker said. "Getting installed before the cut-off mattered more than system preference, opening up opportunities for alternative solar panel brands and models to gain share."

In other words, brand loyalty gave way to installation certainty. Whether those gains persist in 2026 depends on two things:

• Can alternative brands prove long-term reliability now that urgency has faded?

• Can leading manufacturers restore supply confidence?

Conversely, the inverter market barely flinched. Enphase and Tesla together held 90% of Marketplace share—a sign that inverter supply chains proved more resilient than those of solar panels.

National battery attachment rates fell from 41% to 38%, while homeowner interest in storage dropped just one percentage point, from 74% to 73%. Adoption slowed even in high-value storage markets: California declined from 79% to 71%, Texas fell from 61% to 53%, and Hawaii, historically near-universal at 100%, dipped to 85%.

That gap—between what homeowners wanted and what they actually installed—isn't a sign of waning demand, but one of prioritization. Faced with a hard tax credit deadline and finite budgets, homeowners focused on locking in solar savings first, deferring battery installations for later.

"The dip in battery attachment wasn't reduced interest—it was deferred adoption," Walker said. "Thousands of new solar households are now prime candidates for storage retrofits, and that wave is just beginning."

As for storage prices, they rose for the second consecutive period, climbing 3.6% to $1,074/kWh in the second half of 2025. Tariffs on imported battery components are the main culprit, and with trade policy still in flux, this volatility isn't going away anytime soon.

The more interesting story is what's happening inside the market. The price gap between brands has widened, and for the first time in a while, homeowners have real choices at different price points. Tesla remains the value anchor. FranklinWH has emerged as a credible alternative—doubling its Marketplace share in a single period by offering comparable specs at a competitive price. Enphase commands a significant premium, which constrained its appeal during a period when homeowners were already stretching budgets to capture the solar tax credit.

The most significant thing about this edition of the report isn't any single data point—it's that it covers heat pumps and EV charging alongside solar and storage for the first time. That reflects how homeowners are starting to think about their home energy systems—fully integrated solutions rather than isolated products.

A survey of EV charger installers, run by EnergySage’s sister company, Qmerit, found that 55% derive less than 25% of their revenue from chargers alone. Installers are building businesses around the whole home, not a single product—a direct response to homeowners asking bigger, more integrated questions.

“We’re watching the market evolve from buying a point solution clean energy product to designing a home energy system,” Walker said. "The question homeowners are asking installers has fundamentally changed: It's not just 'Should I get an EV charger or solar panels?'—it's 'How do I design a home energy system that gives me control over my costs and my power?' And installers are responding to that change by diversifying their offerings."

This shift is already reshaping the market. Companies are recommending technologies in combinations, not individually, and homeowners are increasingly evaluating solutions through the lens of an integrated home energy system. What used to be separate decisions—solar, storage, EV charging, or heat pumps—are now part of a unified strategy for energy independence, cost control, and resilience.

With the federal tax credit gone for purchased systems, the math for how homeowners pay for solar is shifting fast. 

Solar leases and power purchase agreements (PPAs)—collectively known as third-party ownership (TPO) products—remain eligible for the commercial solar tax credit until 2028, giving them a multi-year pricing advantage over purchased systems that didn't exist before the OBBBA passed. Under a TPO arrangement, the solar company owns the system and claims the tax credit, passing the savings along to homeowners in the form of lower monthly rates. For homeowners who can't claim the tax credit directly now, or who don't want to invest tens of thousands of dollars upfront or take on debt, TPO suddenly looks a lot more attractive than it did a year ago.

This means if you've been on the fence about solar, a lease or PPA might be worth a closer look in 2026, especially if your primary goal is lowering your electric bill without a large upfront commitment. The trade-off, as always, is that you won't own the system or be eligible for most other incentives. But in a post-tax-credit world, the gap between owning and leasing has narrowed in ways it hasn't before.

A new TPO product offers a path to ownership with federal tax credit benefits 

TPO options are already gaining share on the EnergySage Marketplace, and that trend is expected to accelerate in the first half of 2026 as the post-incentive market finds its footing. Worth watching in particular is pre-paid TPO, an emerging option that sits between a cash purchase and a traditional lease. 

In a pre-paid arrangement, you pay upfront like an owner, but the solar company retains ownership of the system for the first five years or so—meaning they claim the tax credit and pass the savings to you through a lower purchase price. It's not ownership in the traditional sense, but it’s a way for homeowners to capture federal tax credit savings with a path to eventual ownership. 

We'll be tracking TPO adoption closely in our next Marketplace Report. In the meantime, you can compare your options on the EnergySage Marketplace—whether you're interested in purchasing upfront, financing, or going the TPO route.