Balcony solar payback calculator
Work out how long a balcony solar system takes to pay for itself in your household – from your location, your consumption and when you are actually at home.
A balcony solar system – Balkonkraftwerk in German – pays for itself out of the electricity you then do not have to buy. So the payback time is decided by three things: what the system costs, how much electricity it produces where you live, and how much of that production you use yourself rather than exporting it. There is no single national payback figure, because the third of those varies more between households than the first two do.
Your details
What actually determines the payback time?
The purchase price is the part people compare first, and it is the least interesting one: systems of a similar size do not differ that much. What differs is the other side of the equation.
- Location. Annual irradiation is not the same in Flensburg as in Freiburg. This calculator takes the yield for your postcode from PVGIS, the European Commission's photovoltaic data service, rather than applying one national number.
- Orientation and shading. A south-facing balcony and a north-facing one with the same panels produce very different amounts. Shading from a building opposite or a balcony above cuts production further.
- Self-consumption. Only the electricity you use yourself while it is being produced saves you money at your own tariff. Exported electricity earns little or nothing on a system this size, so a household that is home during the day gets more out of the same panels.
- Your electricity price. The higher the price you pay, the more each self-consumed kilowatt-hour is worth, and the sooner the system is paid off.
Why we do not quote an average payback time
Because an average would be wrong for almost everyone who reads it. The published figures for balcony solar range widely, and the spread is not disagreement – it is the effect of different assumptions about consumption, routine, price and purchase cost. Rather than picking one of those assumption sets and presenting it as the answer, this page asks you for the four inputs that move the result most and calculates it.
What the calculation includes, and what it leaves out
The figure comes from the same simulation as the full stromFit analysis: location yield from PVGIS, an hourly household load profile, and the economics of a real, purchasable complete system from our verified catalogue rather than an average market price.
Left out on purpose: any feed-in tariff, any assumed rise in electricity prices, and any subsidy. All three would shorten the payback, and all three are uncertain in a way the user cannot check, so leaving them out keeps the result on the conservative side. Where a mandatory part of a system has no verified price yet, the purchase figure is shown as a minimum and the payback as an earliest-possible date rather than being quietly treated as complete. The full list of assumptions is undermethodology.
Next steps
The figures here are for the balcony solar system on its own. If you are also considering storage, the balcony solar battery calculator answers whether a battery pays for itself on top. If you are new to how these systems work in Germany, start with the guide tobalcony solar in Germany. For the exact recommendation including matching systems, start the stromFit analysis.