Free solar estimator. Finally

Solar Panel Cost Calculator

Installing solar panels can be a costly venture, but luckily, they pay themselves off over a few years and eventually give you free electricity!

Still, it’s understandable that you’d want to have a rough cost estimate before taking the plunge. That’s what our solar panel cost calculator is for.

Below, you’ll find easy ways to estimate how many solar panels you might need based on your available space and how much power you need to produce. We hope it helps, but you’re welcome to contact us if you’re feeling stuck.

We’re on a mission to make solar simple for everybody. There is so much value in harnessing energy from the sun.

Table of Contents

Solar power is a great way to reduce your energy costs and be more sustainable. To help you determine the cost of installing solar power, you can use online solar cost calculators. These calculators allow you to enter information about your location, current energy usage, and other factors to determine the estimated cost of installing solar power.

If you’re looking for a really precise calculation, though, it’s best to do it on your own. Don’t worry. we’re here to help. We’re going to take you through the formulas needed and show you how to use them.

We’ll include examples so you can see the formulas in use.

Each home is different, so it’s important to understand your needs and what those mean in terms of having a solar setup. For example, you’re going to want to make sure your setup can produce more power than you need so that you never run out.

Additionally, you will need to store all of that power in an adequate battery attached to an inverter. By adequate, we mean that the battery you choose needs to always stay above 50% capacity to avoid battery degradation.

If you allow your battery to fall below 50% capacity often, it’ll start to lose its ability to charge to 100%. That means you won’t be able to store as much power and run the risk of running out on a rainy day.

It’s so important to know exactly what products you need and how much they will cost before making a purchase. Having an accurate estimate like the solar panel cost calculator you offer will be incredibly helpful in making an informed decision. Have a look below.

Solar Cost Per kWh Calculator

The cost of solar energy per kilowatt-hour (kWh) can vary widely depending on the type of solar panel system you choose, your location, and other factors. Generally, the cost of solar energy is about

Solar Cost Benefit Calculator

Naturally, you’re going to want to know how much money your solar setup is saving you over time. We’ve got you sorted!

Our solar panel efficiency calculator can help you understand how efficient your solar panels are. This is an important aspect of how much money they save you over time. You can also take a look at our solar expansion calculator if you’re looking to upgrade your setup before calculating the cost-benefit.

To figure out the payback period for your solar system, you will need to start by calculating the true cost of installing solar after any incentives have been claimed.

To do this, you’ll need to look at the cost of the solar panels, the cost of the labor needed to install the system, and any other costs incurred. Once you know the true cost of the system, you’ll then need to compare it against the cost of electricity from your local utility company.

This information allows you to understand how long it’ll take to break even on the costs of solar installation. Below is a formula you can use:

(Total System Cost – Value of Incentives) ÷ Cost of Electricity ÷ Annual Electricity Usage = Payback Period.

Simply plug in the values specific to your setup, and you’ll be all set to understand how long it’ll take for your setup to pay for itself and start offering you real value. Remember, solar is a long-term investment.

Have a look at our solar savings calculator for more information on this.

Solar Cost Calculator California

The area you live in can make a difference in terms of how long it takes your setup to pay itself off. This is because the amount of sun received in each area differs, meaning the amount of electricity your setup produces will differ per state.

If you live in California, you get between 4 and 4.5 peak hours of sun per day. This is needed for your panels to produce power at their maximum capacity.

Take this into account when doing your calculations. If you’re in a different state, you can do a simple internet search for your peak sun hours. You’ll need this value for an accurate answer.

Peak sun hours can also affect how long it takes your batteries to recharge. Have a look at our solar panel charge time calculator if you need help in that department.

We’ve also got a solar panel inverter size calculator that will help you determine the inverter size you need once you’ve decided on which solar panels you’ll be investing in.

Did You Find Our Blog Helpful? Then Consider Checking:

• Solar Panel Amps Calculator
• Solar Panel Square Footage Calculator
• Kilowatt-Hour Cost Calculator
• Cost-Effectiveness of Solar Panels
• Cost of Off Grid Solar System
• Solar Battery Storage System Cost
• Solar Calculator
• Sun Peak Hours Calculator
• Solar Angle Calculator
• Solar Payback Calculator
• Solar Calculator Savings
• Solar Calculator for RV
• Solar Lease Calculator

.10 to.20 per kWh, although some areas may be higher or lower.

This is where our calculation comes in. It allows you to input the values specific to your home and area. This means you can optimize your electricity spend and make sure you’re buying solar setup components that really do save you money in the long run.

Calculating the economics of a home solar-electric system is an important step before investing in solar energy. To get started, you’ll need to determine your average daily electricity usage in kilowatt-hours (kWh/day).

The best way to do this is to add up a year’s worth of electricity used from your monthly electric bills, and then divide the total number of KWH used by 365. This will give you an accurate estimate of your average daily electricity usage.

Additionally, you can calculate your daily usage based on the power needs of the lights and appliances in your home or cabin.

Knowing your average daily electricity usage will help you determine the size of the solar-electric system you’ll need and the estimated savings you can expect.

Solar Roof Cost Calculator

Before you can work out exactly what your per kWh cost will be, you’ll need to know what you’ll be spending on your solar panels. There are a variety of factors that affect this.

“How many panels do I need?”

A typical household could use anywhere from six to fourteen 455W solar panels, depending on the size of the home and available space for installation.

If your electricity usage is higher, you may need to consider up to twenty-three panels to meet the parameters of your inverter.

“How do I calculate my solar system size?”

Calculating the size of your solar setup is a straightforward process that can help you determine how many solar panels you’ll need for your home.

Here’s an overview of the process, which you can view as the formula you’ll use:

• Find your monthly average kW usage.
• Divide this by the number of days in the month to give you your daily usage.
• Then, divide this number by between 3 and 5, the average peak sun hours per day in your state. This will give you the setup size you need in kW.
• Lastly, take the above answer and divide it by the wattage rating of the solar panel you’re looking at installing. This will tell you how many panels you need to install in total to meet your daily demand.

Solar Roof Calculations

Here’s an example to illustrate.

• Let’s assume your monthly average kW usage is 900kW. This is an average household usage across the US, so make sure you use your specific usage here. If you use the average and it’s incorrect, you run the risk of not putting enough panels on your roof.
• Now, we’re going to divide 900 by 30, the average number of days in a month. This gives you your daily usage, which in this case is 30kW.
• Next, we’re going to divide our daily usage of 30kW by 4, the average peak sun hours in California. If you’re in another state, you can research the average peak sun hours in your particular state. Input that value in this step. Our answer here is 7,5kW. This is the setup size we need in kW.
• Lastly, we’re going to divide the above answer by the wattage of the solar panel we’re interested in purchasing to determine how many solar panels we need. We’re going to input an average wattage, which is 500W. This gives us an answer of 15. This is the number of solar panels we’d need on our roof to give us an adequate electricity supply.

Solar Choice program costs

NOTE: Solar Choice is closed to new enrollments. This rate calculator can be used by existing Solar Choice customers to estimate their bill impacts for remaining on the program in 2022.

A customer enrolled in the Solar Choice program remains on their existing electric rate plan. When you enrolled, you chose to have 50% or 100% of your monthly electricity usage to be generated via solar projects. This calculator provides bill impact estimates for customers who enrolled in this program between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021 (referred to as 2020 vintage in the Price Terms and Conditions (PDF, 287 KB)). Most participants are part of this group.

Calculate your own estimated costs

If you enrolled in Solar Choice outside of the dates above you are on a different vintage rate. The average impact for a residential customer using 500 kWh/month is about 3.50 at the 100% participation level. However, with a few pieces of information, you can estimate your own monthly costs.

• Find your vintage rate on your bill
• Multiply your monthly usage from your bill (example: 500 kWh/month) by the total price per kWh that applies to you from the Price Terms and Conditions (PDF, 287 KB) to estimate your monthly impact. These are outlined in a table by vintage year. Customers at the 50% participation level will only have half the impact.

Additional Program Details

• Your vintage year is determined by when you joined Solar Choice. If you enrolled in the first six months of a year you are assigned the previous year’s vintage. For example, if you enrolled in May 2021 you would be on the 2020 vintage rate, while if you enrolled in July 2021, you would be on the 2021 vintage.
• All participants on the 2020 vintage pay slightly more for Solar Choice after 03/01/22 compared to before this date. All residential, streetlight, and electric vehicle (BEV) participants will also pay slightly more regardless of when they enrolled.
• Small business customers on the 2019 and 2020 vintage pay slightly more, while customers on 2015-2018 vintages pay less.
• All other vintage rates are lower in 2022 than 2021, meaning those participants pay less after 03/01/22.
• All medium business (A-10) participants still enjoy a discount compared to not participating in Solar Choice.
• Customers can leave Solar Choice at any time without penalty.
• PGE cannot predict future Solar Choice rates, but if a participant leaves the program they will not be able to rejoin until at least 2025 due to direction from the California Public Utilities Commission.

20 Vintage Bill Impact Calculator

COSTS

Estimated premium: 0.00 Cents/kWh

A negative amount is a credit. Estimated costs are reflective of 2020 vintage rate pricing.

ANNUAL EQUIVALENTS

Equivalencies that are presented are based on annual values. They are estimates and are not actual values.

= 100 lbs

= 100 gallons

= 100 tree seedlings

DISCLAIMER: Rates are subject to change annually and as approved by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). PGE’s Solar Choice rate per kWh has been rounded to two decimal places for presentation purposes. For complete rates, review electric rate schedule E-GT (PDF, 383 KB).

Bill charges and credits

In the Solar Choice program, you will be charged for the solar power you are purchasing and related program charges. In return, you will receive a credit for the standard generation you are no longer purchasing. Read on for a more detailed description of our bill charges and credits:

The Solar Charge is the cost of the renewable solar power. This is calculated as the weighted average cost of the resources serving the program.

The Program Charge is set to fund the program’s marketing and administration costs, provide a credit for the positive value that solar provides to the grid, as well as cover additional energy-related costs to ensure that non-participating customers do not fund the program.

Those additional costs include:

• Costs associated with integrating the new renewable resources with the grid (Renewables Integration Charge). No value has yet been approved by the CPUC for this.
• State-level grid-management costs (California Independent System Operator, CAISO).
• Costs for registering, tracking and retiring Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) in the Western Renewable Energy Generation Information System (WREGIS).
• Resource Adequacy (RA) costs to ensure that there are sufficient generating resources available for anticipated load, locally and on a system basis.
• A credit for the positive value that solar provides in delivering energy to the grid during peak hours (Solar Value Adjustment).
• Program marketing and administration costs.

Solar Energy IP Address Insolation Wattage Rating Sizing Estimates Solar Panels Instant Calculator Zipcode

Number of 200 Watt Panels You Will Need to Offset Your Monthly Electric Bill: 7 Configuration: 200 Watt Panels What’s this? at 0.15 efficiency What’s this? Energy Consumption: 200 Kilo-Watt Hrs per Month What’s this?

Location: Tulsa, OK 74129 Not Your Location? Latitude: 36.125928 Longitude:.95.865354

How do we know your location? We don’t actually know your location. We used your IP address, or your Internet Protocol address. Every time you click on a link or request a specific web site, part of the information the website receives as part of your page request is your IP address. We’re not special, it works this way for every webserver on the planet which receives a request for a page. Knowing the IP address helps to trace hackers who want to gain access to webservers illegally. Most of the time, your IP address changes each time you log in to the internet.

What we did is cross-reference your IP address to a generalized zipcode database, and from this, can usually determine the city from which you are accessing this page. Please rest assured, we don’t know anything about you other than the general area from which you’ve requested this page (your home or work computer). Not Your Location?

Not Your Location? Sometimes the IP address is only the IP address of your internet service provider which could be in another city, or even state. If this is the case, you can correct your zipcode in the form to get the right numbers for your area.

Change Calculations

How do we know your monthly electricity consumption? We don’t actually know your energy consumption. We used the average household consumption in the U.S. which is 200 Kilo Watt Hours per month. If you want numbers more closely reflecting your actual energy use, change the number below in the form. You can find your actual number on your electric bill. Return to Form

Why did we pick 200 Watt panels? We picked an average number in the industry. If you would like to change the number, you can change the numbers to reflect a solar panel wattage you are using in the form. Return to Form

• We calculated how much solar energy hits your area based on zip code, using numbers from NASA.
• We used a typical solar panel efficiency of 15%. The solar panel efficiency is how efficient the panel is converting sunlight energy into electricity. You can look at the technical specifications of your chosen panel and enter the real number on the form.

For more detailed information on how we calculated this number, see the explanation below.

How We Calculated Our Numbers

Solar Energy calculations start out with the insolation value. Insolation is a measure of how much sunlight strikes a square meter on the earth in an average day. The map on this page was produced by National Renewable Energy Laboratory NREL, a government research laboratory affiliated with the department of energy. It shows the insolation values for the United States. The insolation values put out by the NREL takes into account weather, sunlight angle, atmospheric scattering of light, etc. Note that these are an average values taken over the years.

Solar Energy (Insolation) Measuring Units

The units of insolation (sunlight energy) are Kilo-Watt-Hours (kWh) / m 2 (area) / day.

Example: Insolation for Tulsa, OK = 4.35 kWh/m 2 /day

To get the Yearly Value, Multiply average by 365 days: Yearly Insolation = 4.35 365 = 1587.75 kWh/m 2 /year

Dividing by 12 to get the average monthly value:

Monthly Insolation for Tulsa, OK = Insolation 365 / 12 = 132.3125 kWh/m 2 /month

Solar Panel Efficiency

A solar panel does not convert all solar energy hitting it to electricity, due to technological restraints. A typical solar panel is about 15% efficient, meaning it converts about 15% of the energy hitting it into electricity.

If we multiply by the efficiency of a solar panel we get the average amount of energy per meter squared a solar panel will produce in a month. Note: this estimate is only valid if the solar panel has absolutely no shadow on it. Return to Form

Monthly Insolation for Tulsa, OK after Efficiency = Insolation Efficiency 365 / 12 = 19.846875 kWh/m 2 /month

How Energy Much Do We Need to Produce?

Next we take a look at the desired amount of energy to be generated per month. Note this is an average monthly value. For our calculations, we used 200 kWh. the average American household consumption of 200 kWh/month.

Monthly Energy Target = 200 kWh/month

Surface Area to Produce Energy

The number of solar panels is done by calculating the amount of surface area of the panels needed. In ohter words, the average amount of energy needed per month divided by the amount of energy generated per meter square of solar panel on an average month gives us the area of solar panels required.

Square Area Needed m 2 = Monthly Energy Needed / (Insolation Efficiency 365 / 12)

Let’s see how the units cancel each other out in algebra:

m 2 = (kWh/month) / (kWh/m 2 /month)

This is the area the solar panels need to cover, operating at the given efficiency.

For Tulsa, OK, Square Area Needed:

10.07715320422 m 2 = (200)/ (19.846875m 2 )

Wattage Rating is Dependant on the Size of Panel

For convenience for the user, the output of a solar panel is given in the number of solar panels by Wattage Rating type. The Wattage Rating is a number the manufacturer assigns to the panel based on the Watts the panel generated under laboratory conditions. It isn’t a valid means of saying how much the panel will actually generate, other then to say (roughly) that a 200W solar panel will generate twice the energy of a 100W solar panel.

Wattage Rating = Watts/m 2 (hypothetical)

Fortunately the industry uses standard testing conditions to determine the wattage rating on the panels. Also, the vast majority of solar panels all use the same technology (crystalline silicon). This means there is a strong correspondence of Wattage Rating to area regardless of manufacturer.

We next find the relation between Wattage Rating and the physical surface area of the solar panel. This ratio is expressed as W/m 2. For example, a 80 Watt solar panel has a ratio of about 122.57 W/m 2. 80W / 122.57 W/m 2 tells us that a typical 80W solar panel has a surface area of about.65 m 2.

Wattage Rating Curve

We decided to approximate the Wattage rating by using a series of tiers. After sampling many different solar panels from different manufacturers we came up with the following data:

After 120 Watts the ratio stays the same of about 130 W/m 2.

Note that these values are averages for each panel type. Almost all the individual values used to compute the averages were fairly close together. Any that were dramatically different were for obvious reasons (such as outdated technology) and eliminated. Also noteworthy is that this data strongly suggests that as the Wattage Rating goes down (the smaller the panel) the less efficient it is.

A default value of a 200 Watts is used for the type of solar panel. This means a default ratio of 130 W/m 2 is used.

Solar Panel Orientation

What is the best direction to face solar panels in Australia?When solar took off around ten years ago, we did our best with our information. One common conclusion we were all told was that North-facing panels were the only way, but it turns out that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

The sun rises from the East and sets in the West, so we can achieve the same daily production of a North-facing roof by having a system with panels evenly split between East-West. But sometimes, when there are no other options, having panels on a South-facing roof can still yield results!

Solar System Size

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for solar panels; however, giving a closed answer to this question without a previous household energy assessment is complicated.

The power of the system you’ll need depends on several factors. For example, you can read more about this in our article “Solar Panels: The Ultimate Guide to Get the Right Solar System for Your Home.”

We have created this table to give you an approximate idea of the number of solar panels and the installation size. Remember that these numbers are approximate and that several factors can affect the actual size of your system.

Feed-in Tariff

As you may already know, you can sell the extra energy you produce to the Queensland electricity network. The Queensland Government’s Solar Bonus Scheme pays a feed-in tariff for the surplus electricity generated from solar power systems. Each company has different solar feed-in tariff rates and conditions.

However, the average rate in Queensland is 7.5 per kWh. So if you need help finding the best company to sell the extra energy that you produce, you can contact us. and we will be happy to help you with any questions.

Solar Payback Period

The Payback Period simply means how long it takes for the savings from your electricity bills to equal the value of installing a solar energy system.

When talking about Payback Periods, I am often asked, “ how long does it take to recover the initial investment?” In other words, how long will it take for you to save on your electricity bill?

Well, I have to say that it depends on many factors, one of which is the geographic location where you live. So if you look at the graph below, you will notice that the bigger the system you install, the shorter the payback period, even though the initial investment is higher. It seems unreal, right?

But it’s true. And that is the reason why many people are now turning to solar energy. As you can see below, Queensland is one of the locations with lower Payback Period times, which makes it even better for Queenslanders to invest in a solar system.