How Much Does Solar Save on an Electricity Bill in New York? The 10-Year Math

A $300-a-month Con Edison bill doesn’t cost you $3,600 a year. Over the next decade, at the rate Con Ed has been raising prices, it costs you more than $52,000. Here’s how that number is built — and how much of it solar actually takes back.

If you’ve asked yourself how much does solar save on an electricity bill in New York, you’ve probably gotten a vague answer: “it depends.” That’s true, but it’s not useful. So let’s do the arithmetic with real Con Edison numbers, a realistic system, and no rounding in solar’s favor. By the end you’ll have a figure you can check against your own bill.

Start with what your bill really is

The average residential rate in Con Edison territory — Westchester and the five boroughs — is about 38¢ per kilowatt-hour, with plenty of households landing anywhere from 32¢ to 52¢ depending on the month and the rate plan. The national average is roughly 14¢. That means a home in Scarsdale or Bay Ridge pays close to three times what the same appliances would cost in most of the country.

Most of that gap isn’t the electricity itself. Your bill has two big pieces: the supply charge (the actual power) and the delivery charge (Con Ed’s wires, poles, substations, and the cost of maintaining them). In Con Ed territory, delivery runs about twice the supply charge — roughly two-thirds of the total. On a $300 bill, that’s about $200 for delivery and $100 for the electricity you used. Solar matters here because production on your roof reduces the kilowatt-hours Con Ed both supplies and delivers, so it shrinks both lines, not just one.

The compounding problem nobody puts on the bill

Con Edison rates have risen about 8% a year on average. Eight percent sounds manageable in any single year — it’s an extra $24 a month on a $300 bill. But increases stack. Year two’s 8% is applied to a bill that already went up, and so on. Run it out and a $300 bill today looks like this:

• Today: $300 per month
• 3 years from now: about $378 per month
• 5 years from now: about $444 per month
• 10 years from now: about $648 per month — more than double

Add up all ten years and you’re past $52,000, for one household, with no new appliances, no EV, no heat pump, nothing changing except the price. That figure is the thing solar is competing against — not this month’s bill, but the trajectory.

What the same home pays with solar

A properly sized system in the New York metro area — which gets about 9 peak sun hours a day in summer and 5 in winter — can offset 80 to 100% of a household’s annual electricity use. Net metering credits the excess you produce in June and July at the full retail rate, and those credits carry over to cover the shorter days in January. The net effect across a year is that Con Ed sends you a bill for the basic service charge of roughly $20 a month for staying connected to the grid, and not much else.

The panels themselves aren’t free, of course. With $0-down financing — the way most State Solar customers go solar — you replace the Con Ed bill with a fixed monthly solar payment. For a home with a $300 Con Ed bill, the combined monthly outlay (solar payment plus that ~$20 grid fee) typically lands around $150 to $180 a month. That’s a 40–50% reduction in year one, before any of the incentives below.

The part that changes the ten-year math is that the solar payment doesn’t get an 8% raise every year. It’s the same number in year ten as year one. Con Ed’s bill keeps climbing; yours stays put.

Two honest caveats. The $20 basic service charge can inch up over time, and your actual solar payment depends on system size, roof, and financing term. But the shape of the comparison holds for nearly every home we look at in Westchester and the boroughs: a flat line versus a rising one, and the gap between them widening every year.

The incentives that make the solar column smaller

The figures above already assume a financed system, but New York’s incentives are what make that monthly payment lower than the Con Ed bill from day one. The NY-Sun Megawatt Block rebate from NYSERDA is a per-watt discount that your installer applies directly to the system price, so you never see it as a separate step. The New York State solar tax credit returns 25% of the system cost, up to $5,000, as a direct credit against your state income tax — a credit, not a deduction. And the 15-year property tax exemption means the value solar adds to your home doesn’t raise your assessment.

If you’re in the five boroughs, there’s one more: the NYC Property Tax Abatement returns 30% of the installed cost as property tax credits spread over four years. On a $30,000 system that’s $9,000 back, on top of everything above. It requires owning the system rather than leasing it, which is one reason ownership is usually the stronger path in the city. (Cash and loan buyers can also claim the federal tax credit; lease and PPA customers don’t, so we don’t lean on it here.)

So, how much does solar save in New York?

For a typical Con Edison household paying around $300 a month: roughly $120 to $150 a month in the first year, growing to more than $450 a month by year ten as Con Ed’s rates keep rising and yours doesn’t. Over a decade, that’s on the order of $30,000 or more — and the system keeps producing for 25 years or longer, most of them after the financing is paid off.

Your number will be different. A $220 bill saves less in dollars, a $450 bill saves more, and roof orientation, shade, and system size all move the result. The only way to know is to run the projection on your actual usage rather than a hypothetical one — which is what a free analysis is for. Since 2017, that’s been the first thing we do with every homeowner who calls, whether or not they go ahead.