How to disable Visual Studio 2015 and above automatic bower install on solution load?

In VS 2017 and newer you can go to:

Tools -> Options -> Projects and Solutions -> Web Package Management -> Package Restore

And set to false the restores you do not want to happen on project open or save:

It seems it is not possible to disable this for a specific solution or project, but here is how you can disable it globally:

• In VS, go to Tools > Options > Projects and Solutions > External Web Tools
• Disable all search paths, in my case there were four of them

Note that the output window may display some errors during solution loading. In my case it complained about gulp not being found. This has no negative effects, however.

All tools work as expected when called from the command line.