Solar Savings Calculator

How much will a solar panel system save me? What will my solar payback period be?  The solar savings calculator below will answer this question.

You’ll find an explanation below the calculator.

Annual Solar production

When you receive a solar quote from MC Electrical, you will receive an estimate of how much the proposed system will produce each month of the year and each year in total. These estimated figures should be within 10 per cent of what your system will produce. (If a solar company doesn’t give you this information, choose another solar company!)

The calculator’s default figure 10 000 kWh is approximately what a 6.6kW system would produce on a north roof with no shade in Brisbane. An East or West 6.6kW system with no shade will produce around 9000kWh.

Solar System Cost

If you haven’t already received a quote, get an indication of our Solar System Prices here.

What do you pay for Electricity?

Power prices vary from time to time. We’ve set the default settings in the calculator based on average prices in Brisbane. Toggle across to adjust these prices, We keep an updated spreadsheet of all South East Qld retailers rates. If you are our customer, contact us for updated figures. We have not accounted for pay on time discounts.

Your Solar feed-in tariff

This is just the amount that your retailer will pay you for the excess solar power you send back to the grid. In South-East Qld, rates are between 8 cents and 17 cents. Be careful, retailers can often only pay you the higher rate for a portion of the feed-in and then drop the feed-in rate once you exceed that. Also, they may offer you a lower feed-in tariff if your solar panel array (not inverter size) is larger than 10kW. And finally, the feed-in tariff is often not part of a contract, so retailers have been known to drop feed-in tariffs mid-contract.

How much will solar save me?

Once you have adjusted the figures to suit, the solar savings calculator will then show what your best and worst-case scenarios are. In reality, your actual savings will not be either of these figures. It will be closer to the “worst-case” figure if you use very little power during the day (e.g., just the fridge running). It will be closer to the best case if you use heaps of power in sunlight hours (you work from home or have a pool). The average figure just splits the difference and gives you a ballpark of your payback period and annual savings.