BusinessDay
Oladehinde Oladipo
February 24, 2026
The humble backyard fence in China may never look the same again, as solar module prices collapse to around $0.10 per watt in some markets, roughly half what they cost just two years ago, according to findings by BusinessDay.
Data gathered showed that developers, farmers, and homeowners in China are discovering that solar panels are no longer just rooftop equipment. They are becoming a building material in their own right.
Across China, where the price collapse has been most acute, solar panels are already appearing as perimeter fencing, retaining walls, and building facades. The economics that once made such installations absurd are quietly reversing.
“When modules were expensive, you needed every panel in the optimal position to justify the investment,” one renewable energy analyst noted. “That logic no longer holds.”

The China factor
The driver behind the transformation is unmistakably Chinese industrial scale. Beijing’s aggressive expansion of solar manufacturing capacity, spanning polysilicon refining, wafer cutting, cell production, and module assembly, has flooded global markets with supply that has chronically outpaced demand. The result has been a sustained, steep price war that has reshaped the global energy landscape.
Read also: African Development Bank solar push powers Nigerian universities off the grid
Between 2022 and 2024, international module prices fell by close to 50 percent, pushing wholesale rates to levels that would have seemed implausible a decade ago. In 2010, panels commonly traded above $1 per watt. By 2017, prices had eased to around $0.40 per watt. Today, that benchmark has been shattered, with some markets seeing spot prices near $0.10 per watt.
The effect has been to demote the solar panel from the most expensive component of an installation to one of its cheaper elements, a reversal that fundamentally changes project economics.

Walls that generate electricity

The concept of building-integrated photovoltaics is not new. Architects and engineers have experimented with solar facades for years. What is new is that plummeting panel costs have made these applications commercially viable outside of prestige or demonstration projects.
A vertical solar panel captures less sunlight than one angled toward the sun on a pitched roof. But the total cost calculation increasingly favours the fence or wall. Rooftop installations carry hidden expenses: working at height, safety compliance, potential structural reinforcement, and more complex logistics all inflate labour costs. A ground-level or fence-mounted installation is faster, safer, and cheaper to erect.
The trade-off, somewhat lower annual generation in exchange for meaningfully lower installation cost, is a bargain that growing numbers of project developers are willing to accept.
Technology has also improved in step with falling prices. Modern residential panels routinely deliver outputs of 500 to 600 watts, with efficiencies exceeding 20 percent across many models. A decade ago, such specifications were the preserve of premium, high-cost products.

Implications for emerging markets
For markets such as South Africa, where energy costs remain high and grid reliability is uncertain, the commoditisation of solar modules carries significant implications. Agricultural operations with long perimeter fences, industrial facilities, and suburban households could all find solar fencing an increasingly compelling proposition, provided grid-connection and regulatory frameworks keep pace with falling hardware costs.
Grid integration remains a genuine constraint. Even as equipment becomes cheaper, the ability to feed surplus power into local networks or store it cost-effectively shapes the real-world returns from non-conventional installations.
A new phase
What the solar industry is witnessing amounts to a quiet but consequential shift. Solar energy is graduating from a specialised technology into something closer to a commodity construction input, an evolution that carries echoes of how steel, glass, and concrete before it changed the built environment.

The fence around a smallholding or the boundary wall of a warehouse may soon be doing double duty: defining a perimeter and quietly generating electricity. In the new economics of solar, even the most ordinary surface is becoming a candidate for the energy transition.

Dipo Oladehinde is a skilled energy analyst with experience across Nigeria’s energy sector alongside relevant know-how about Nigeria’s macro economy. He provides a blend of market intelligence, financial analysis, industry insight, micro and macro-level analysis of a wide range of local and international issues as well as informed technical rudiments for policy-making and private directions.
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