Home Battery Payback Calculator — Ten US States
Priced on 2026 time-of-use rates and export rules across ten states. No federal tax credit is assumed — Section 25D ended 2025-12-31. Pick your state first: it decides every price below.
Enter your monthly bill, battery capacity and installed cost — state prices are already loaded for California. Or load an illustrative example to see how the model behaves.
Where the savings come from
| Component | Year 1 | Calculation |
|---|---|---|
| Self-consumption uplift | — | |
| VPP earnings − extra cost | — | user input |
Usage scenarios
How much of your evening usage a battery can actually shift is the biggest unknown in any payback estimate. Lower and higher describe energy, not better financial outcomes — the central row is the model's best estimate.
| Scenario | Year-1 savings | Payback | 10-yr net |
|---|
What drives value in this state
Same inputs, other states
Parameters used in this calculation
| Parameter | Value | Source |
|---|
How to read these results
A long payback is the honest 2026 answer once the federal credit is gone: the case rests on the peak-versus-export spread and your rate trajectory, not on subsidies. Compare quotes against the break-even installed price — pay more than that and the 10-year math stops working. The max upfront cost answers the same question at your required return, and the usage scenarios band brackets the biggest unknown. Estimates only; not financial, tax, or installation advice.
How this number is produced
Annual usage is backed out of your bill at your state's average residential rate, then capped by how much of that usage realistically falls in the evening peak window. Discharge is limited to the smaller of what the battery can deliver and what your evening load can absorb — the model will not invent load to flatter a result. Savings are the discharge, net of round-trip losses, valued at the difference between what you avoid buying and what you give up by not exporting. Future years apply your escalation assumption to that figure.
In states where exports are credited at full retail on a flat rate — Massachusetts, Texas, Florida on representative plans — storing solar does not reduce your bill, and the honest answer is $0 in bill savings. The value case there rests on backup power and VPP payments, which the results screen shows separately. The model page explains what is counted and what is not; the data and method page lists every constant with its source.
Related reading
| State guides — ten states, ten different answers: rates, export rules, incentives, outage context | Directory |
| NEM 3.0 explained — why California exports pay far less than peak power | Guide |
| Battery comparison — specs and reference installed-cost ranges | Data |
| Full guide — how to read a payback number and the mistakes that inflate it | Article |
| Quote checklist — twelve things to confirm before you sign | Tool |