New Tariffs on Solar Equipment Take Effect December 4
If you’ve been putting off a decision on solar, here’s a new reason to stop waiting: the federal government just put a price floor under solar panels, and it kicks in this December.
On August 7, the administration announced Section 232 tariffs and minimum import prices covering polysilicon and the products made from it, everything from raw silicon through finished solar modules. The rules take effect December 4, 2026 at 12:01 AM Eastern. After that date, imported solar modules can’t be priced below $0.38 per watt, no matter what a manufacturer would otherwise charge. There’s also a 15% tariff on polysilicon itself, plus separate minimum prices for ingots, wafers, and cells further up the supply chain.
Most solar modules installed in the U.S. today are made, at least in part, from imported components. Industry analysts are estimating this pushes average module costs up around $0.10 per watt once the floor is in place, and imported finished modules specifically could jump from roughly $0.24/W today to the new $0.38/W minimum. That’s on top of the anti-dumping and countervailing duties that have applied to panels from Southeast Asia for years.
We’ve been telling customers for a while now that the economics of waiting keep getting worse, not better. Net metering terms in Washington are under discussion and may not stay as favorable as they are today. PSE has rate increases working their way through 2029. Add a hard cost floor on panels landing December 4, and the case for locking in a project now, rather than a year from now, gets stronger.
The cost of doing nothing keeps going up while the cost of installed systems is, for the moment, still set under the old pricing. If you’re weighing a residential, commercial, or storage project and are planning to decide “sometime this fall or winter,” there’s now a specific date attached to that decision. Contracts signed and equipment procured ahead of December 4 aren’t subject to the new floor.
If you’ve got a project you’ve been sitting on, now’s a reasonable time to get a firm quote and understand where your equipment would be sourced from. We’re happy to walk through what December 4 actually means for your specific numbers.
Cheers, Will