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May 26 2023
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Solar Panel Cost Calculator California: 3 Ways to Estimate Your Cost

By Solar Panel Cost Calculator, Solar Panel Cost No Comments

Installing solar panels is not only a major construction project, it’s also an investment in reducing your energy costs and carbon emissions.

As such, it’s a good idea to begin the solar process with an understanding of how much your project could cost – just like looking up the Kelly Blue Book value of a car before stepping foot into the dealership.

As a robust and mature residential solar market, California has plenty of resources to calculate the cost of your solar project. In this article, we’ll identify three ways to calculate your solar panel cost, and explore whether solar panels will get cheaper in 2023.

Our goal, as always, is to empower you with the resources and knowledge to make educated decisions during the solar process.

How do you calculate solar panel costs in California?

There are a few ways to estimate the cost of solar panels for your home without inviting a salesperson into your home.

Online solar calculators

There are a number of online calculators that use Google Earth imaging assumptions about your utility costs to provide a ballpark estimate of how much solar would cost and how much you could save.

It’s important to note that every solar panel cost calculator operates based on assumptions, and the results should be taken with a grain of salt.

Here are a few resources to check out:

Solar.com has its own calculator that generates a side-by-side comparison of your energy costs before and after solar based on your address and average electricity costs. Our calculator also allows you to calculate the cost of adding battery storage to your solar system.

Check your utility provider to see if they have an online solar calculator or solar marketplace. For example, on Southern California Edison’s Solar Marketplace you can easily design a solar system and generate binding quotes from local installers without ever leaving your couch.

Punch your address into the NREL PVWatts Calculator to get a precise idea of how much a solar system would produce on your roof. This calculator doesn’t provide cost estimates, but by working backward you can get an idea of how large of a system you’ll need based on our annual electricity consumption.

Calculate solar panel cost by hand

If online calculators aren’t your thing, there are some simple steps to calculate your solar panel cost by hand.

Like the online calculators, this method relies on some assumptions. However, at least you’ll know exactly what those assumptions are, since you are the one making them.

The steps to calculate your solar panel cost are show in the graphic below:

calculate cost of solar panels

You notice in the final steps we ask you to assume a price per watt (PPW). This figure typically ranges between $3 to $5, depending on your location and local incentives, and you won’t know exactly what it is until you get binding quotes from installers.

Get binding quotes from local installers

You can use all the calculators in the world, but you won’t know exactly how much solar costs until you get binding quotes from local installers.

We emphasize binding because many online solar marketplaces offer price estimates that are often much lower than what installers can actually offer. However, on solar.com, we offer binding quotes based on live pricing set by the installers themselves.

That means that the price you see in the quote is the price you’ll pay.

Our marketplace is free to use, so if you are genuinely interested in how much solar will cost, you can design a custom system and generate binding quotes with no financial investment.

 

 

Is it worth it to get solar panels in California?

Even with NEM 3.0 solar billing, it is worth getting solar panels in California for energy cost savings alone. And it’s important to remember that energy cost savings isn’t the only benefit of home solar – it’s just the benefit that makes solar a no-brainer.

 

In California, and especially under NEM 3.0, the benefits are compounded when you pair solar with battery storage.

How long can a house run on solar power alone?

California has more power outages than any other state, leading many homeowners to consider solar and battery storage as a backup option. A study by the Berkeley Lab found that a small solar system with 10 kWh of storage can “fully meet backup needs over a 3-day outage in virtually all U.S. counties and any month of the year.”

It’s important to note that “backup needs” does not include heating and cooling, which require massive amounts of electricity.

However, given California’s abundant sunshine, it’s plausible to think that solar and battery backup can last longer and power more systems than in other areas of the country.

Do solar panels add value to a house?

Yes, it’s well documented by Zillow and the Berkeley Lab that solar panels increase home value, although it’s difficult to pin down exactly how much.

Given California’s extremely high (and rising) utility rates, buying a home with solar panels is essentially buying a home with a built-in hedge against energy inflation. It’s also worth noting that:

  • California has a solar property tax exemption, so the home value added by solar won’t increase your property taxes
  • Millennials are making up a larger portion of homebuyers and tend to value energy efficiency and eco-friendly home features

The bottom line

California is a leader in residential solar adoption for a reason. Between high utility rates and abundant sunshine, solar panels can substantially reduce energy costs – even with NEM 3.0 solar billing.

There are a handful of ways to calculate the cost of solar panels, but the only way to get an accurate answer is to get binding quotes from local installers.

Generate binding quotes for your custom solar system today.

 

May 26 2023
Love0
how do i estimate solar installation costs

How Do I Estimate Solar Installation Costs?

By Solar Panel Installation Cost, Solar Panel Cost No Comments

Most solar quotes feature three numbers: The contract price of the system, the value of incentives, and the net cost of the system after incentives.

What solar quotes don’t typically feature is an itemized cost breakdown of the equipment, labor, and other soft costs. So, it’s only natural to wonder how much of your money is spent on installing solar panels versus buying the actual panels.

In this article, we’ll break down how much solar panels cost verus the cost to install them, and give you the tools to estimate how much labor costs for an average solar installation.

Use our solar panel cost calculator to get an estimate for your total project cost.

Solar panel installation cost breakdown

Based on 2022 average labor rates, solar panel installation cost accounts for roughly 5.5% of the total cost of a solar project, according to the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).

To put that in perspective, using the a modeled market price (MMP) of $2.95 per Watt for residential solar, labor costs contributed just 16 cents per Watt of solar capacity installed. That’s tied with structural balance of system (racking) for the second smallest piece of the solar cost pie, as shown below. However, it’s important to note — as the NREL does in its report — that these cost benchmarks vary from market to market.

residential solar cost breakdown

Chart courtesy of NREL. MSP = minimum sustainable price; MMP = modeled market price.

Using the NREL’s modeled market price, a 7.9 kW solar system would cost $23,305 and solar panel installation labor cost would account for just $1,264.

So, while homeowners are used to labor being a notably expensive part of car repairs, landscaping, and other home improvement projects, it’s a relatively small piece of the puzzle for solar projects. And even with wages increasing, the labor cost for installing solar panels has steadily decreased alongside the average cost of solar panels in the 2010’s, as shown below.

residential solar cost breakdown 2010 to 2020

Although labor, inverter, and solar panel cost fell substantially in the 2010’s, balance of system hardware and non-labor soft costs have been more stubborn. These non-labor soft costs including permitting, inspection, and interconnection fees, customer acquisition costs, general overhead (facility costs, gas, insurance, etc), and profit.

Short of installing the solar panels yourself (which we don’t recommend for safety and many other reasons), one of the only ways to reduce these non-labor soft costs is to use the solar.com marketplace to compare quotes. Simply put, our free marketplace alleviates customer acquisition burden for the solar companies in our network and allows them to focus on what they do best: Install solar panels.

Solar.com also fosters healthy competition between local installers, motivating them to offer their lowest possible pricing.

 

 

How do I estimate solar installation costs?

One simple way to estimate your solar installation cost is to multiply the gross cost of your project by 0.055. According to the NREL data above, installation typically accounts for 5.5% of the total cost of a residential solar project, so this equation will get you a ballpark figure for labor costs.

For example, if you receive a solar quote for $25,000, you can expect labor to make up around $1,375 of the all-in cost. (Check out our solar calculator to estimate the cost of your project.)

It’s important to note that solar panel installation costs are specific to each project and market based on wages, local competition, and specialization of the labor. For example, if you need a main panel box upgrade, the additional labor from a certified electrician will add to the cost of the project. Labor costs also vary from state to state based on the minimum wage, cost of living, and availability of employees.

Because of this variability, it’s unlikely that you’ll find an accurate solar installation cost estimator online. However, it’s worth remembering that installation labor is one least expensive line items in your solar project — and not something to skimp on if you want your solar system to be installed properly and last for 25 years or more.

Will solar panels get cheaper in 2024?

It’s difficult to say where the price of solar panels will go in 2024 because there are opposing market forces at play.

First, the solar industry is still working to untangle supply chain challenges created by the pandemic, which increased the cost of solar panels for the first time in several decades. At the same time, the solar industry is growing at an exponential rate and prices are expected to fall as adoption increases.

Related reading: Will Electricity Prices Go Down in 2024?

Additionally, it’s unclear how local manufacturing incentivized by the Inflation Reduction Act will affect solar panel prices. On one hand, local manufacturing reduces the cost of shipping and tariffs. On the other, US manufacturing workers typically make higher wages than manufacturing workers overseas, which could put upward pressure on solar panel pricing.

It’s important to understand that the solar modules themselves typically make up less than 20% of a solar project. So, while you may pay slightly less for panels by waiting a few years, you’ll likely spend more than what you save on inflated electricity prices while you wait.

Compare multiple quotes for your custom solar project today.