While going solar will usually reduce your power bill by a lot, it won’t get rid of it completely.
Why You’ll Still Have a Power Bill
When you purchase residential, grid-tied solar, you still rely on the power company to provide power when your panels aren’t producing, to accept and distribute any solar power you don’t need, and to maintain the infrastructure needed to do so.
In short, since your power company is still providing services to you, they’ll still charge you for those services.
Charges from your power company usually show up in one of two ways:
- Usage charges after net metering: after you’re credited for the power you send into the grid, you may have leftover kWh used. You’ll be charged for these, just as you’re charged now for each kWh you use.
- “Grid connection fees” and other recurring charges: these are recurring fees that your power company charges you to be connected to their services.
How Much You'll Save
How much your power bill goes down depends on your utility company and jurisdiction policies. Each set of policies is slightly different. Here are two ways to estimate:
Rough Manual Calculation
You can do a very rough estimate of your new bill with this formula:
(Current monthly utility bill) - (your utility’s $/kWh rate x average monthly kWh used) = new monthly utility bill
Example:
($350 monthly utility bill) - ($0.15/kWh x 2100 kWh used) = $35 new utility bill
For this rough scenario, we’re assuming that you get 1:1 credit for every kWh you send in to the grid, so the new utility bill amount should be similar to the recurring fees that your utility charges.
Most states are moving to partial buyback credits, and you'll likely have a new utility agreement when you sign up for net metering, so this is a somewhat optimistic estimate.
Project Solar Calculation
When you get a solar design from our team, we’ll use an advanced solar design software to model panel placement, utility policies, and even weather patterns. We will give you the most accurate estimate of your new average bill that technology can provide.