Berkeley Lab Finds US Utility Solar Cost Rose 7% to $61/MWh in 2025

• Berkeley Lab puts the 2025 generation cost of new U.S. utility-scale solar at $61/MWh before tax credits, up 7% from 2024.
• Solar's wholesale value rose 32% to $41/MWh, and utility-scale plants supplied about half of all new U.S. capacity in 2025.
• Queued solar fell 19% to 772 GW; 243 GW already holds a draft or signed interconnection agreement.

New utility-scale solar plants that started up in the U.S. in 2025 cost $61 per megawatt-hour to generate before tax credits, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found. That is 7% more than in 2024. The wholesale value of solar power rose faster, by 32% to $41/MWh.

The figures come from Berkeley Lab's Utility-Scale Solar, 2026 Edition, posted in October. It covers 1,989 ground-mounted projects larger than 5 MW built through 2025. Utility-scale plants supplied 83% of new U.S. solar capacity last year and about half of all new generating capacity.

Installed costs rose 2% to $1.69 per watt-AC, still 72% below 2010. Higher capital and financing costs, and more projects in less sunny regions, have pushed the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) up 24% since 2022. With tax credits it averaged $41/MWh, up from $37/MWh in 2022. Cost data for 2024-25 remain preliminary.

Market value climbed as natural gas prices rose, the lab said. Since 2022, levelized power purchase agreement (PPA) prices have mostly landed at $25-35/MWh in CAISO and the non-ISO West. Elsewhere they ran $45-80/MWh.

The 2026 edition in numbers

• 29 GW (AC) of utility-scale solar came online in 2025, down from 30 GW in 2024. Texas added the most, at 8.9 GW.
• 127 MW (AC) was the average new project, 7% larger than in 2024. The biggest was the 600-MW Hornet Solar in Texas.
• $20/MWh, or roughly a third of the average 2025 LCOE, is what tax credits remove (list.solar calculation).
• $79/MWh of idealized wholesale value for solar paired with batteries, nearly double standalone solar's $41/MWh.
• 772 GW of solar sat in interconnection queues at end-2025, down 19%. 49% of it was paired with batteries.
• $64.23/MWh is LevelTen Energy's new Core-Markets P25 solar PPA price for Q3 2026.

Newer offers point higher. LevelTen's Continental Index P25 solar price rose 4.9% in the third quarter, the company said on Oct. 20. It blamed Section 232 tariffs on polysilicon, wafers, cells and modules, which take effect in December. Berkeley Lab's PPA prices lag, as contracts are typically signed 1.5 to 4 years before start-up.

Berkeley Lab counts 243 GW of queued solar with a draft or signed interconnection agreement, and EIA lists 135 GW of planned additions through 2030. Safe-harbored projects must be in service by the end of 2030 to receive tax credits, LevelTen said.