I keep hearing about the low price of panels but where do you find the panels that cheap?
I'm asking because my uncle has a business of selling and installing swimming pools, he has the electrician working for him and it contemplated the possibility of installing solar panels for his customers (the more sun, the higher electricity consumption in the swimming pool because you need to filter out algaes before they bloom, so it's a perfect match and he has to do the wiring anyway) and the main reason why he abandoned the idea was the cost of the panels themselves.
I feel there's a huge disconnect between the talk about technology and real life. It's like when people keep talking about how battery cost have plummeted in recent years and how they now dirt cheap, yet when you want to buy one, electric cars are not cheaper than 4 years ago.
I don't know what part of the world are you from, but here in Poland, ordinary 400W Bi-Facial panel costs around $80/pc, when buying from wholesaler which are plenty and accessible even to non-companies (as a proof, I did buy 4pcs myself). And if you buy in bulk, it can even be $50/pc.
But boy how much the mounting system costs - it's at least 3 times the cost of the panes if you buy them in 2xN or 4xN bulk and I'm excluding labor here.
Don't know where you are, (US probably?), but here in the Netherlands I can find many suppliers offering decent panels at about $90-110 each. I'm guessing wholesale pricing (or importing yourself) would be cheaper.
Though in the US there's probably a 100%+ tariff on non-US panels...
The prices you see in articles are usually for utility scale solar, where thousands of panels are purchased in bulk from the manufacturer.
For the lowly homeowner looking to get a few panels, you're buying something that has 4 middlemen's hands on it already.
I recently ordered two 500w panels from Amazon for 200€.