Black Hills Energy solar

Wyoming gives a solar buyer the best sun in the northern Rockies and the worst price for the power it replaces. A kilowatt of panels here makes about 1,601 kilowatt-hours a year — some of the strongest production in the country — yet the electricity it displaces costs only about 14 cents a kilowatt-hour statewide, and on Rocky Mountain Power the energy rate is 11.5 cents. The panels cost $3.14 a watt installed, a typical 7.04 kW system runs about $22,106 before incentives, and there is no federal credit and no state rebate to take anything off that price in 2026. What decides whether the system pays is the calendar: Wyoming nets your power month by month at full retail, carries the credits through the year, and then buys whatever is left in January at about 1.4 cents a kilowatt-hour. Size the array to the house and the payback lands near 16 years on Rocky Mountain Power and near 26 years on the cheapest co-op in Jackson. Oversize it and the extra power sells for a tenth of its value. Every size gets priced here, the utilities get compared one by one, the ranch and off-grid cases get their own arithmetic, and the guide finishes by naming the Wyoming households that should buy — and the ones that should wait for rates to rise instead.