Texas Solar Calculator

You enter your address, then your electricity usage (either your average bill or your actual kWh), then a solar system size and how you'd pay for it: cash, a loan, or a lease. From there, the calculator estimates how much power a system that size would actually produce at your location, using real weather and sun exposure data where it's available.

It then prices your electricity two ways: what you'd pay without solar, and what you'd pay with it, based on how much of your solar production gets used in the house versus sold back to the grid at a lower buyback rate. That split matters a lot in Texas (see below), so it's never treated as a flat percentage off your bill.

The result is a real monthly bill comparison, a 25-year cost projection, and a payback timeline, built from the same math whether you're checking a brand new system, reviewing a quote you already got, or seeing if a system you already own was actually a good deal.

Texas doesn't have net metering. In states that do, extra power your panels send back to the grid is credited at the same rate you pay for electricity, so oversizing a system barely matters. Texas doesn't work that way: excess power gets sold back to your electricity provider at that plan's own buyback rate, often well below the retail rate you pay for the power you buy.

Most of Texas is also a deregulated electricity market, so you don't buy power straight from the company that owns the wires. You pick a retail electricity plan, and your area's utility (the transmission and distribution company, or TDU) charges a separate delivery fee on top, no matter which plan you pick. Two plans with the same usage rate can still leave you with very different real costs once buyback rates and delivery charges are factored in.

That's why a system size or payback estimate from a generic, national solar calculator often doesn't hold up here. This calculator prices your buyback rate and delivery charges the way a real Texas electric bill actually works, not the way a net metering state would.