One thing’s constant in Australia: It’s fine and mostly sunny.
So much so, that if you were a weather reporter and you bet on it being fine and mostly sunny when the teleprompter went down, you’d probably get away with it.
At Solar Market we don’t like to bet. We like to invest, and so should you.
We strive to bring every Aussie the info they need before investing in their own solar system. That’s why we have our free Solar Calculator, which combines an STC Calculator with a Solar Savings Calculator all in one. BOOM!
Use our Solar Calculator alongside our Solar Panel Calculator and in just a few clicks you’ll know if solar is worth the investment for your home.
Not your average solar calculator
If you’ve ever tried another solar calculator you’ll know it’s hard to get the whole picture in one go.
That’s how ours is different – it does it all!
Our Solar Panel Calculator & Solar Calculator Combo will:
- Calculate what size of solar system you need;
- Calculate your STC rebate;
- Calculate how much you will save on your electricity bills if you had solar; AND
- Calculate your ROI and payback period!
We want every Aussie – young and old, vegemite-hater or normal person to easily calculate how much solar panels could save them and the world around them.
Just a teaser – the average Aussie home saves hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on their energy bill each year when they have solar.
How much will you save?
Try our Solar Calculator (Solar Savings Calculator & STC Calculator combined tool) and Solar Panel Calculator combo to find out in just a few seconds.
Step 1 - Use our Solar Panel Calculator to check your ideal system size
Our Solar Panel Calculator is a quick quiz used to discover the optimal solar system size for your home.
Just answer a few basic questions about your home and energy usage and the Solar Panel Calculator crunches the numbers for you.
Step 2 - Use our Solar Calculator to find out how much money you will save
Now you know your ideal solar system size, plug that into our Solar Calculator to:
- Calculate your STC rebate;
- Calculate how much you will save on your electricity bills if you had solar; AND
- Calculate your ROI and payback period!
Cool, right?
Step 3 - Get 3 quotes for your solar system and start saving
Calculating your potential savings from solar is great, but nothing beats watching your bills shrink for real!
When you’re done with our Solar Calculator and Solar Panel Calculator fill out our easy form and we’ll connect you with 3 local SAA accredited installers to get you accurate solar quotes tailored to your home. All for FREE!
3 minutes, 3 Steps, 3 Quotes. Cha ching!
Want to calculate your solar rebate? Here’s our STC Calculator
STC stands for Small-scale Technology Certificates – a fancy term for Australia’s Federal Government’s solar power incentive. STCs deliver you a cash discount on the cost of a solar system installed at your home.
Each STC has a dollar value that fluctuates as they are traded in the STC market.
The number of STCs you are eligible for depends on the size of your solar system and where you are located in Australia. The sunnier your city, the more green energy you’ll produce and therefore the more STCs you’ll get as a result!
Use our STC calculator to see how much you can get from the Australian Government.
When you use our STC Calculator, note that the number of STCs a solar system is eligible for decreases every year on the 1st of January, so to get the biggest discount it’s wise to get solar sooner rather than later.
And here’s an example for a 6.6kW solar system being installed in Brisbane in 2022:
Visit our Rebates page to find out your zone.
Next, find out the current $ value of STCs…
…then multiply the number of STCs by that $ value to get the total STC rebate you can expect.
In this example below we assume an STC value of $38 (generally, STCs are valued between $35 and $38 each, depending on what the STC market is doing at the time).
Got more questions about planning your solar system? Checkout some of the questions our readers have been asking:
Solar Calculator FAQs
The capacity of solar panels (how many watts they produce) tends to increase each year as the technology improves. Nowadays you need waaaay less roof space than years gone by to fit the same sized system.
Using data from across Australia, here are some rough averages you could expect:
| Average system price* | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| System size (kW) | Budget | Mid range | Top end |
| 4kW | $2,760 | $3,680 | $4,800 |
| 5kW | $3,450 | $4,600 | $6,000 |
| 6.6kW | $4,554 | $6,072 | $7,920 |
| 10kW | $6,900 | $9,200 | $12,000 |
| 15kW | $10,350 | $13,800 | $18,000 |
| Panel number and space requirements | ||
|---|---|---|
| System size (kW) | Number of panels | Roof area required (m2) |
| 4kW | 11 | 21.78 |
| 5kW | 13 | 25.74 |
| 6.6kW | 17 | 33.66 |
| 10kW | 26 | 51.48 |
| 15kW | 39 | 77.22 |
| Assumptions | |
|---|---|
| Panel capacity | 390 watts |
| Panel size | 1.9m2 |
| Price per Watt – Budget system | $0.69 |
| Price per Watt – Mid range system | $0.92 |
| Price per Watt – Top end system | $1.20 |
If you’re unsure what sized system best suits your needs give our Solar Panel Calculator a go. It’s free!
A solar Savings calculator generally estimates savings based on the following:
- How much electricity your home consumes from the grid
- How much you pay for that energy i.e. how much your electricity bills are
- The time of day you use electricity and how that aligns to the hours when your solar system will be producing energy
- Where in Australia you live – the sunnier your city the more energy your panels will produce
- How much your electricity retailer (e.g. Origin, Simple Energy, Alinta, etc) will pay you for solar energy you export to the grid – known as a Feed In Tariff
The solar savings calculator is then able to estimate how much your bills will reduce by, therefore how much you can save each year by installing a solar system!
A solar cost calculator is pretty simple when you boil it down.
It looks at your desired solar system capacity (in kW), converts it to watts, and then multiplies that number by the average cost per watt for a residential rooftop solar PV system.
The average price per watt for solar is tracked by a number of data providers, which solar industry folks like us then use to give you easy to digest Solar Cost Calculators like this.
You just want to make sure that the per watt pricing data is current as solar pricing does fluctuate based on a number of factors.
Both our Solar Calculator and Solar Panel Calculator have been developed by our team of experts who have combined decades worth of experience working in the Australian solar industry.
Our Solar Calculator and Solar Panel Calculator are updated regularly to include the most recent solar and energy industry data, including the latest electricity tariffs from all the Australian energy providers you know, like Origin, AGL, Simply Energy, Synergy, etc.
There’s no spin. No massaging of numbers. Just unbiased information that you can actually use.
When you are looking at your solar calculator results, you may be wondering what a Feed-in-Tariffs (FiT) is.
A FiT is what your electricity retailer will pay you for the solar energy you don’t need so instead your solar system exports it to the grid for other homes to use.
Step 1: Use our Solar Calculator to work out how much solar will save you on your electricity bills over a year.
Step 2: Get quotes for how much a solar system will cost for your home.
Step 3: Divide the cost of the solar system by the amount you will save on your electricity bills each year (your Solar Calculator results from Step 1). This is the number of years it will take before your investment in a solar system has paid itself off and you’re ahead!
Most Aussie homes pay off their solar system, due to the savings from their electricity bills, in well under 5 years, with 2.5 years being common.
As an added bonus, you don’t need to wait 2.5 years before you start saving. With solar, your electricity bills are slashed from the day your solar system is switched on! Woohoo!
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