CostHonest
Free instant estimates · Ontario market ranges

What does solar cost — and when does it pay back?

Enter your monthly hydro bill and how much of it you want to offset; the calculator sizes the system from real production yields, prices it installed, and — unlike most solar pages — shows the simple payback in years. The default $140 bill at 80% offset sizes about 9 kW for $22,500–31,500 with a 17–23 year payback at Ontario rates. That honesty is the point: solar pencils best with net metering, batteries against time-of-use rates, or in higher-rate provinces.

Common questions

Why is the payback so long?

Ontario's blended residential rate is modest, so each generated kilowatt-hour displaces a small cost. The system price divided by the annual bill savings is the honest arithmetic — 17–23 years on the default inputs. Higher provincial rates, rising rates, or batteries shifting time-of-use consumption all shorten it.

How is the system size calculated?

Your bill implies annual consumption (at a ~13¢ blended rate), and each installed kilowatt of panels yields roughly 1,100–1,200 kWh a year in southern Canada. Offsetting 80% of a $140 bill therefore needs about 9 kW — a large but common residential array.

Is a battery worth adding?

At $8,000–14,000 it rarely improves pure payback, but it changes what solar is: backup through outages and the ability to consume your own generation at peak time-of-use prices. If resilience matters to you, price it in from the start — retrofitting costs more.

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