Home battery cost: what installer quotes show in 2026

The typical quote

EnergySage, a quote marketplace, says solar batteries typically cost $15,647 before incentives for 13.5 kWh, the capacity of one Tesla Powerwall 3. The page was updated 13 Jul 2026 and describes quotes from the first half of 2026. It is an average of what installers offered for the whole installed system, so it is not a hardware price, and it excludes any rebate or tax credit.

The same page contradicts its own headline in one place. Its brand table lists Tesla at $967 per kWh for a 13.5 kWh battery, which multiplies to $13,055, or $2,592 below the headline figure. The page does not say why. A reasonable reading is that the headline covers all brands and all quote types while the table covers the ten most quoted brands, but that is our guess, not EnergySage's explanation.

Price per kWh by brand

Third party data, copied from EnergySage on 8 Nov 2026. *Quote total as printed by EnergySage, assuming no incentives. These are brand averages across every model a brand sells, so no row is the price of a specific battery. The widest spread is a factor of 4.8 (derived), and EnergySage does not publish how many quotes sit behind each brand. EnergySage's own text adds that Fortress Power is the most expensive brand at about $3,505 per kWh, a brand outside its ten-brand table, so the $1,648 top of this chart is the top of the ten most quoted, not of the market.

By state, the same page shows averages from $563 per kWh in Alabama to $1,586 in Louisiana. Some states in that table list battery sizes of 27 kWh or 40.5 kWh, which suggests very few quotes behind them (our inference, the page gives no counts). We do not reproduce the state table.

A second source, and what it can and cannot check

Berkeley Lab's August 2026 data update, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, covers about 450,000 U.S. solar installs from 2025. It does not publish a battery price per kWh. What it does publish helps check three things around the EnergySage figure.

• Size. The median residential storage capacity in 2025 was 13.5 kWh, matching the 13.5 kWh EnergySage uses for its headline. The lab notes that about 80% of that sizing data comes from California.
• Price level. For cash purchases, median prices were $2.1/W higher for solar paired with storage than for solar alone. The lab states this per watt of solar, not per kWh of battery. On the lab's median 2025 residential system of 7.7 kW, $2.1/W is about $16,170 (derived, back of the envelope). That is the same order as $15,647, which is all this comparison supports.
• Adoption. Residential storage attachment rose from 25% of new solar installs in 2024 to 37% in 2025, so quotes for batteries come mostly from sites that also install panels. Retrofits and stand-alone batteries are outside the lab's count.

The per-brand dollars per kWh therefore rest on one source. Berkeley Lab supports the size and the overall level, not the brand ranking.

What moves the number

EnergySage says equipment is 50-60% of the price of a storage system and that labor and project planning make up most of the rest. It also lists these cost factors, each stated on its page:

• Whether the battery includes an inverter. A separate inverter "could add a couple of thousand dollars."
• Whether it goes in with a new solar system or is added to an existing one, where extra labor and wiring cost more.
• How much you back up. EnergySage puts whole-home backup around $34,000, against the typical 13.5 kWh quote for essential circuits.
• Electrical panel work, such as a critical load panel or a panel upgrade.

The scope of electrical work depends on the house and the local code, so it needs a licensed electrician's assessment and the permit process in your area. Nothing here is installation guidance.

Why no model gets a price here

We read the datasheets and warranty documents for every battery in our battery comparison, and none prints a price. We also tried NLR's 2025 Annual Technology Baseline for residential storage, where the cost breakdown is an image and the page text gives no $/kWh figure. Solar.com publishes per-model medians, but its pages returned HTTP 429 when we tried to read them on 8 Nov 2026, so we use nothing from it. A per-kWh figure for a named model would be a guess, and the comparison leaves that column out. The warranty comparison shows what each maker promises, which is the part you can check against paper.

If you want to turn a quote into a per-kWh number yourself, divide the quote by the usable kWh on the datasheet. The methodology page says which capacity figure each datasheet uses and how we derive end-of-warranty capacity.

Before and after incentives

Every number above is before incentives. The federal 30% credit for homeowners no longer applies to systems finished after 31 Dec 2025; the details are on the federal credit status page. State and utility programs still exist and vary a lot: the battery incentives ledger lists the ones whose official page we opened, with amounts as published and the date we checked. Whether a battery pays back depends on your tariff, outages and incentives, and this page does not estimate it. It is not tax or financial advice.

To see what a given battery can run through an outage, use the battery runtime calculator, and for two common models side by side see Powerwall 3 vs Enphase IQ Battery 10C.

Sources and gaps

• EnergySage, Solar battery cost: Are they actually worth it in 2026?, updated 13 Jul 2026, read 8 Nov 2026. Third party. One source for every per-brand and per-state figure and for the $15,647 headline.
• Berkeley Lab, U.S. Distributed Solar and Storage 2026 Data Update (August 2026), read 8 Nov 2026. National laboratory, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Source for size, attachment rate and the per-watt premium.
• Manufacturer datasheets and warranties for the batteries in the table: no prices (listed on sources).

Not read: Solar.com model medians (HTTP 429), the cost breakdown behind NLR's residential storage benchmark (image only), installer price lists. No price on this page was collected from an installer or a manufacturer.