How Solar Panels Pay For Themselves

Below are the main factors that influence this timescale.

How solar panels pay for themselves.

This is a helpful number but it s not the only way to look at the value of solar. Allow us to explain how to do that. Subtract the value of up front incentives and rebates from the gross cost of your solar panel system. Provided you ve not already bought your panels all you need to do is two simple calculations.

On average a typical solar system should wind up costing about 20 000 over its 25 year lifespan which includes the cost of inverters and a battery. The homeowner in our example will either need to pay cash or take out a solar loan for around that amount. Investment cost and annual savings. This is how you save money by switching to solar energy and you can even make money in some cases.

However the time it will take to reach the payback time or the earnings that can be obtained are deeply varied and site dependent. Solar incentives rebates and the federal tax credit. Considering a residential rooftop solar panel installation. Learning the time frame over which an investment in solar will pay off can help you decide if installing it is the right decision.

You might think that there is a simple binary answer as to whether solar panels will pay for themselves but it is actually affected by a huge range of factors. Energy costs which can also rise and fall play their own part in how quickly money is saved on solar panels. Their efficiency varies based on weather conditions and may vary from season to season and year to year. Take the following steps to calculate your payback period.

The payback period is a common metric used to assess the value of solar because it shows how long your solar panels take to pay for themselves. These srecs can amount to 300 each. Solar panels are not a reliable source of power in all areas. Factors such as solar panel costs incentives the type of solar panels and your location influence the payback period of your system.

However it is important to understand that solar panels can eventually pay for themselves. Homeowners who install solar panel systems to power their homes will earn one srec for every 1 000 kilowatt hours that their solar panels produce. For example you might not be aware that the amount of energy that you can gather and therefore how fast your solar panels will pay for themselves depends very much on where you are located. Years to payback investment cost solar panels annual savings.

The trouble with calculating when solar panels will pay for themselves lies in the large number of variables involved in solar panel energy. As of june 2020 the average cost of a 6 kw home solar system is about 3 20 per watt or 19 200 before incentives. Divide your combined costs by your annual financial benefits.