What solar costs in the Philippines, and how to work out your own number
Search that question and you get eight price guides. Put them side by side and the cheapest and the dearest are about double each other for the same size of system. They cannot all be right, and none of them has seen your roof.
Solar is priced per roof, not per kilowatt. So this page does the half of the arithmetic that can honestly be done from a web page, using figures you read off your own statement, and prints every assumption it made underneath the answer.
Size it from your own bill
Take two figures off your latest statement. Everything below the line is an assumption you can change. The result illustrates a size; it does not quote a price.
From your statement
The rate is the total amount due divided by the kilowatt-hours billed. It is not the generation charge on its own. What the other charges on your bill are.
Add an appliance you are thinking of running
An air conditioner's rating is printed on the unit and on its manual. Use that number rather than its horsepower.
Assumptions, yours to change
What that comes to
- Array you would need
- 1.4 kWp
- Panels, at the size above
- 3
- Roof it would occupy
- 7 m²
- Electricity it would cover each month
- 180 kWh
Assumptions this used
Your 400 kWh a month. 45% of it used while the sun is up. 5.23 peak sun hours a day, the Global Solar Atlas figure at Pampanga (San Fernando), which is that point rather than an average of the province. A performance ratio of 0.8, covering inverter losses, heat, wiring and dust. 550 W panels at about 2.3 m² each. No electricity rate, until you put your own in.
Peak sun hours is the Global Solar Atlas value at one named point in each area, not an average of the province, and it follows the area you pick above. Type over it if you have a reading for your own address, and we will measure your roof properly before we quote anything.
Four things move the figure
Two quotations for the same house can differ honestly. These are usually why.
- How much of your bill you want covered
- Covering every kilowatt-hour you use is a much bigger array than covering the daytime ones, and the last quarter of the bill is always the most expensive quarter to cover.
- The roof
- Pitch, orientation, the material, how high it is and whether a truck can get near it all change the mounting and the labour. A low concrete deck and a two-storey GI roof behind a narrow gate are different jobs with the same panels on top.
- The inverter, and whether a battery goes behind it
- A string inverter feeding the grid is the cheapest arrangement. Microinverters, a hybrid inverter or any amount of storage all move the figure, and storage moves it most.
- The paperwork
- A grid-tied system applying for net metering carries an application, an inspection and a meter change. A zero-export system for your own use does not, and since August 2026 it carries less of it than it used to.
The paperwork got lighter in August 2026
The Department of Energy issued Department Circular 2026-08-0017, which sets out simpler rules for own-use solar that exports nothing to the grid. Under it, a household installing a zero-export system that stays connected to the grid notifies its distribution utility, gets a building permit from the local government, and does not need a certificate of compliance from the Energy Regulatory Commission. An off-grid system notifies nobody, because there is no utility on the other end of it. A micro-solar system needs neither the certificate nor the permit.
Separately, House Bill 10431, the proposed Sariling Kuryente Act, would strip out more of the fees on rooftop solar for personal use. It is still a bill.
Source: BusinessMirror, "DOE simplifies rules for own-use solar panel installation", 5 August 2026, and "Law easing permits, fees for rooftop solar seen to cut demand from grid", 10 August 2026. Check the current position with your own local government and distribution utility before you budget around any of it.
Exporting, or not?
It is the fork that decides most of your paperwork, and it is worth settling early.
- Grid-tied, applying for net metering
- Your surplus earns credits. There is an application to your utility, an inspection and a meter change.
- Zero-export, own use only
- Nothing goes back to the grid, so there is less to apply for. Any surplus is simply not generated.
What to insist a quotation shows you
Whoever you hire, ours included. A single all-in figure with no breakdown is very hard to compare against anything.
- The panel make, model and wattage, and how many of them.
- The inverter make and model, and whether it is string, micro or hybrid.
- The mounting system, and what it is fixed into.
- Labour, priced separately from equipment.
- Whether permit and application work is included or billed on top.
- The warranty term on each item, and whose warranty it is.
Questions we get about cost
How much is a solar panel installation in the Philippines?
Installed systems are priced per kilowatt of array, and the published ranges disagree with each other by roughly a factor of two for the same job. What actually sets your figure is how much of your bill you want covered, the roof it has to sit on, whether a battery goes behind the inverter, and which permits apply.
Work out the array size first, using the tool above and figures from your own statement. Then a quotation has something real to price.
Do you publish a price list?
No. A price list would have to assume a roof we have not seen, and we would rather not put a number in front of you that we cannot stand behind on the day. Send us the town and your monthly kilowatt-hours and we will come and measure the rest.
How many solar panels would run my air conditioner?
Take the watts printed on the unit’s own nameplate and multiply by the hours you run it in a day. Horsepower will not do it. Put that into the appliance row in the tool above and the array grows by however much it needs to.
Running an air conditioner overnight is a different question, because that load falls when the panels are not producing. That one needs a battery, and it is worth asking us about separately.
Is solar worth it for my house?
It depends on three things you already know and one you probably do not. You know roughly what you use, what you pay per kilowatt-hour, and how long you plan to stay. The one to find out is how much of your usage falls in daylight, because that is the part an array without a battery can actually reach.
Can I pay for it in instalments?
Ask us. Terms are agreed as part of the quotation, because they move with the size of the job and with whatever your bank or co-operative is offering that month.
Send us the two numbers and we will do the rest
Your town and your monthly kilowatt-hours are enough for a first conversation. Everything after that needs somebody on the roof with a tape measure, which is the part a web page cannot do.
Tell us the property and what you are trying to cut, and you will get a written answer with a size and a next step. No visit is booked and nothing is charged for asking.
Nothing on this page is a quotation. The sizing tool is an illustration built from figures you supply and assumptions you can change, and its output is not a promise about what any particular roof will generate or save. Send us the details or use the Message us button and we will talk about your actual property.