Tesla Solar in 2026: Solar Roof Is Gone — Here's How It Actually Works Now

If you've been eyeing Tesla solar to feed your home charging setup, the shopping experience looks noticeably different than it did even a year ago. Earlier this month, Tesla discontinued the Solar Roof — the glass solar tile it launched back in 2016 and promoted for years. According to a new breakdown from Electrek, that decision says less about Tesla abandoning solar and more about where the company is steering the business next.

Short version: Tesla still very much wants to sell you solar. It just wants to sell you panels and a battery, and in most of the country, it wants someone else to climb on your roof.

How Tesla Solar Shrank

Tesla bought SolarCity for roughly $2.6 billion in 2016 and instantly became the largest residential solar installer in the US. It didn't hold that title. Quarterly solar deployments have declined for years, and Tesla eventually scaled back how much detail it discloses about the segment at all.

Meanwhile, the broader energy business is thriving — Tesla reported $12.8 billion in energy revenue in 2025, up 27% year over year. But that growth is almost entirely battery storage: Megapack and Powerwall, not rooftop solar.

Solar Roof was the sharpest example of the problem. By the end of 2022, Tesla had installed only about 3,000 of the tile roofs in the US — roughly 0.17% of residential solar installations that year. It was expensive, slow to install, and it never scaled.

What Tesla Actually Sells Now

The centerpiece is a panel Tesla built itself. In January 2026, the company launched a US-made 420-watt solar panel assembled at Gigafactory Buffalo in New York — the same plant that used to produce Solar Roof tiles. Tesla says it's the first solar panel it has fully designed and manufactured in-house.

• 420W output, all-black aesthetic
• Integrated mounting for a cleaner, faster install
• Better shade performance than prior offerings
• Assembled in Buffalo, NY — US-made hardware

The panel is designed to pair with Powerwall 3, which folds the home battery and the solar inverter into a single unit. On Tesla's design tool, the default configuration is now panels bundled with a Powerwall 3, and the entire pitch is built around riding out outages and dodging rising time-of-use rates.

Solar-only is still available — the configurator lets you drop the battery — but Powerwall comes pre-selected. Tesla is selling energy independence and backup power more than it's selling solar generation on its own.

Who Installs It Is the Big Change

This is the part that trips up buyers. Tesla is stepping back from doing its own installations. In September 2024, it began recruiting third-party "Certified Installers" while winding down in-house solar crews.

"Tesla works with trained Certified Installers to install our home energy and charging products in areas where Tesla does not directly install." — Tesla support pages

That network scaled fast. Tesla counted roughly 2,000 certified installers across 14 countries in late 2024. Today its partner page lists more than 7,000 installers in 35-plus countries and over 1 million installations. These companies buy Tesla hardware, quote it, install it, and handle service — all running on Tesla's "Tesla One" software platform.

So there are effectively two paths to Tesla solar. In Tesla's own "direct service territories," Tesla sells and installs with its own crews. Everywhere else, you're buying Tesla equipment while a certified installer designs, prices, installs, and services the system. The scale of that direct operation isn't public.

Availability Is Deliberately Vague

Tesla no longer publishes a list of states where it installs directly. You won't know which model applies to you until you punch your address into the online design tool.

The sales side, though, is essentially national. The configurator generates instant quotes and takes a $100 refundable deposit to start an order in states across the country, with a base cash price around $2.30 per watt before installation and incentives. Financing is standardized:

• Solar loans: around 7.24%
• Powerwall loans: around 6.99%
• Leases: around 8.5%

Geography matters most on the install and lease side. Tesla's 25-year solar lease (12 years for Powerwall-only), with a buyout option after five years and a 3% annual price escalator, is offered only in Tesla's direct service territories. Even within a single state, lease availability and utility incentives can vary by utility — which is a big part of why Tesla keeps the map fuzzy and funnels everyone to the address-based tool.

What This Means If You Charge at Home

For EV owners, the practical takeaway is that Tesla now treats the home as a battery-first system with solar attached, not the other way around. If you're charging a Model 3, Model Y, or Cybertruck overnight, that framing actually lines up with how most people use energy — store cheap or self-generated power, then dump it into the car when rates spike.

A few things worth doing before you commit:

• Run your address through the configurator first. It's the only way to learn whether Tesla or a third party will handle your install, and whether the lease is even on the table.
• Compare the certified installer's quote against local competitors. If a partner company is designing and pricing your system, you're negotiating with them, not Tesla.
• Ask who handles service and warranty claims. In partner territories, that's the installer — clarify it up front.
• Factor in the 3% annual escalator if the lease looks like the cheapest monthly option. Tesla pushes it as the "lowest monthly price," but that number climbs every year.
• Get your charging hardware sorted in parallel. Wall connectors, mobile connector setups, NACS and CCS adapters, and a solid roadside kit all matter regardless of which way the solar decision goes.

The Bottom Line

Killing Solar Roof isn't Tesla walking away from solar — it's Tesla dropping a product that never scaled in favor of one it can actually manufacture at volume. The 2026 version of Tesla solar is a hardware and software company: panels from Buffalo, Powerwall 3 as the hub, and a global installer network doing the physical work.

For buyers, that's a mixed bag. You get a cleaner, US-made product and standardized national pricing, but far less clarity about who's actually showing up at your house and what your local terms look like. Do the address check early, read the lease math carefully, and treat the certified installer as the real counterparty on everything after the sale.