I pulled the trigger a little more than a year ago on installing solar panels on the roof of our house, after years of being on the fence. Trump had just won the election, and I predicted correctly that the federal energy tax credit (30% of the price) would not be around for much longer. It's been a year since then, and I now have real life usage to perform a retrospective analysis on whether this was the right decision or not.

Without further ado, here are the numbers:

The cost of the solar panels was $18,600.

The federal tax credit was $5,580, making the final cost $13,020.

From April 2024 until March 2025, before I had solar, my total energy bill (electricity and gas) came out to be $2,818.25.

From April 2025 until March 2026, after I had solar, my total energy bill came out to be $1,707.49.

Thus, over the course of a year, solar saved me $1,110.76.

At this rate, the cost of the solar panels will be fully offset in 12 years (11.7, to be exact), assuming that electricity prices do not change.

What makes the potential savings difficult to calculate was that there is not a constant amount of electricity generated every day. More electricity is generated during the day time, and none is generated at night. However, excess electricity generated during the day is sold back to the electric company at a discounted price and bought back at night at full retail price. This complicated the math to the point where we could only rely on real world usage numbers, which could only be derived after the decision had been made.

Originally, my motivation for installing solar panels was also to hedge against future energy price hikes. Only time will tell whether those potential price hikes come to pass or not.

As the solar panels are rated to retain around 80% of their capacity after 20 years, it seems that in retrospect, this decision was the right one.

Finally, there are some things to note: last year, both A/C units in our house broke and had to be replaced. The downstairs unit broke at the beginning of summer and was replaced in the middle of summer. The upstairs unit broke at the end of summer and was also replaced then. So, the savings from the year with the solar panels may be a bit optimistic. I will need to observe the electricity savings this year to gauge how big of an impact replacing the A/C units had. I'm expecting my electricity cost this year will be quite a bit less than last year. Then, I will need to calculate whether or not I produced any savings after factoring in the cost of the solar panels and both A/C units.

One cautionary note: never use the 2500 rated air filters from Costco. They will break your A/C units. I learned that the hard way. Even though my A/C units were old (maybe the original ones in this 20+ year old house), but they were reliable units from a time when things were built to last. Unfortunately, the new A/C units may not be as reliable. That's another can of worms for another time.