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Solar panels in Phoenix, AZ

Every figure below is produced by simulating a full year — 8,760 hours — of sun angles, cloud cover, air temperature and wind for Phoenix, then running the result through a panel and inverter model. No rules of thumb.

1,631kWh per kW / year
11,418kWh from a 7 kW roof
0.739performance ratio

What a system actually produces here

Solar output in Phoenix peaks in May and bottoms out in December, a swing of about 1.6×. That seasonal shape matters more than the annual total if your utility settles exports monthly rather than annually — a big summer surplus can be worth much less than the same energy spread evenly.

MonthSun (kWh/m²/day)kWh per kW7 kW system
Jan3.3112781
Feb4.3119830
Mar5.51471,028
Apr6.91581,109
May7.71651,157
Jun7.91551,083
Jul7.21481,033
Aug6.71451,015
Sep6.0138967
Oct4.7129903
Nov3.6111777
Dec3.0105734

Electricity rates that shape the payback

What a solar system saves in Phoenix depends less on how much it produces than on when it produces, and what your utility pays for the surplus. These are the AZ schedules modelled by the calculator:

Arizona Public Service — Time-of-Use 4–7pm Weekdays

A narrow 3-hour weekday peak and a deep winter midday super-off-peak. Fixed charge $13.00/month. Summer On-peak $0.34, Off-peak $0.12, Super off-peak $0.12. Winter On-peak $0.33, Off-peak $0.12, Super off-peak $0.03.
Source: APS Time-of-Use 4pm–7pm Weekdays service plan

Salt River Project — E-27 Customer Generation

SRP puts solar customers on a demand plan. Energy is cheap; the monthly peak-kW charge is where the bill lives. Fixed charge $20.00/month. Summer On-peak $0.07, Off-peak $0.06. Winter On-peak $0.07, Off-peak $0.06.
Source: SRP residential solar price plan comparison

Export rule: Arizona Public Service — a fixed export credit of 5.55¢/kWh, set by the commission and stepping down each year. Salt River Project — a fixed export credit of 3.45¢/kWh — SRP's bill is driven by a monthly peak-demand charge more than by exports. Under net billing, exported kilowatt-hours earn far less than the retail price you pay to import them — which is why self-consumption and batteries change the maths so much. The calculator settles every hour individually rather than netting annually.

Run your own numbers

Payback depends on what you pay for the system, how much power your household uses after dark, and which incentives you qualify for — none of which a city page can know. The calculator asks for those and settles all 8,760 hours against your actual rate.

Open the payback calculator →

See also: solar incentives in Arizona — the state credit, the export rules, and what the §25D expiry changed for buyers here.

Other cities

Method

Irradiance is decomposed into beam and diffuse components and projected onto the array plane with the Perez model, with incidence-angle losses, a cell-temperature model driven by air temperature and wind, and an inverter efficiency curve including clipping. Annual yield is checked against NREL PVWatts v8 across all 18 modelled cities; RMS error is 2.70%. See the glossary for what each term means.