Commercial Solar Savings Calculator

It is a screening tool, not a quote. It sizes an array from your average monthly bill using assumed electricity rates and production figures for your state, so it will get you to the right order of magnitude. What it cannot see is your roof condition, your tariff's demand-charge structure, the distance from the array to your point of interconnection, or whether the utility will require an equipment upgrade. Those four things routinely move the real answer by years.

Your average monthly electric bill, your type of business and your state. That is enough for a first estimate. To get a real proposal we ask for twelve consecutive months of utility bills, because the rate schedule, the demand charges and the power factor penalty are all on the bill and none of them show up in a single monthly total.

Yes. The detailed results apply an assumed 30% federal investment tax credit to the estimated installed cost and show the net figure. Whether your business can actually use that credit depends on your tax liability and entity structure, which is a question for a Certified Tax Accountant, not for us. USDA REAP grant funding is not included in the estimate.

Because the shape of your load matters as much as its size. A poultry farm peaks on summer afternoons when solar is at its strongest. A hotel peaks in the evening. A plant running second and third shift uses most of its power in the dark. The calculator adjusts both the size of the array and the share of generation assumed to be consumed on site accordingly.

Commercial solar carries fixed costs — engineering, stamped drawings, permitting and the utility interconnection process — that do not shrink much with system size. Below roughly $500 a month, those fixed costs dominate and the payback stops making sense. Rather than return a misleading number, the calculator asks you to call us instead.