Do Homes Use More Electricity After Going Solar? The Same 79 LA Homes, Year 1 vs Years 2–3
In the same Los Angeles-area homes, electricity use kept rising after the panels went up. Adjusted for heat and cold, the typical home used 6% more in its second year than in its first year with solar, and 10% more by its third. The spread is wide: by year three 16 of 45 homes used more than 20% more, while 8 used at least 5% less. This is the trend after going solar, not a comparison with life before it.
These are 79 homes in our Enphase monitoring fleet whose consumption meter has a clean record from the first months after the system was switched on, followed for at least two years. A consumption meter measures everything the house uses, so the figures are whole-house use, not the utility bill. Most of the homes went solar in 2023, a cool year in Los Angeles, followed by a hot 2024, which is why every comparison here is adjusted for weather.
Year by year, the same homes
| Comparison | Homes | Median home, raw | Median home, weather-adjusted | Middle half, adjusted | All homes combined, adjusted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 2 vs year 1 | 50 | +5.6% | +6.2% | −2.0% to +16.7% | +4.4% |
| Year 3 vs year 1 | 45 | +8.6% | +9.6% | −1.9% to +26.1% | +10.5% |
| Years are the first, second and third 12 months from each home’s first clean month. “All homes combined” compares the total use of the same homes, so larger homes weigh more. | |||||
https://cali-energy.com/research/home-electricity-use-after-solar-los-angeles. Aggregated data are free to use under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page.| Change | Homes, year 2 | Homes, year 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Fell more than 10% | 6 | 5 |
| Fell 5–10% | 2 | 3 |
| Within ±5% | 15 | 12 |
| Rose 5–10% | 9 | 3 |
| Rose 10–20% | 8 | 6 |
| Rose more than 20% | 10 | 16 |
The median hides two kinds of homes. About a quarter barely changed: 12 of 45 stayed within 5% of their first year by year three. About a third grew a lot: 16 used more than 20% more. Fitted month by month across all 79 homes, the weather-adjusted trend was a median +2.8% a year, with the middle half between −1.7% and +10.9%; 34 homes grew by 5% a year or more and 13 shrank by as much.
Why the weather adjustment matters
Air conditioning drives much of the year-to-year swing in Los Angeles: the typical home in this set added about 1.6 kWh a day for every degree that a day’s average temperature rose above 65 °F. A home whose first year was the cool 2023 and second year the hot 2024 would look as if it had changed its habits when it had only met a hotter summer. Adjusted home by home for each home’s own response to heat and cold, the increase remains: it is a change in the household, not in the weather.
For context, the average SCE residential account used 5,786 kWh in 2024 and 5,892 kWh in 2025 (+1.8%), from SCE’s own data, against a median one-year rise of 6% in the solar homes. More on heat and use: how much electricity solar homes use.
What could be behind it
Electrification
An EV, a heat pump, an induction range or a heat-pump water heater adds load that was not there before. See planning for an all-electric home.
Cheaper daytime power
With panels on the roof, running the AC or the pool pump at midday feels free, and some households use more.
Life changes
More people at home, working from home or a new ADU on the same meter raise use regardless of solar.
Nothing at all
About a quarter of homes barely changed. A rise is common, not universal.
The meter records energy, not appliances. The research literature has found the same direction. A study of 277 solar homes and about 4,000 homes without solar in Phoenix, using hourly utility meter data, found that for every extra kilowatt-hour the panels generated, households used about 0.18 kWh more — an 18% “rebound” (Qiu, Kahn and Xing, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2019). The measures differ, but a 10% rise in use over three years, in homes whose panels cover about their annual use, is of the same order.
Why it matters: a system sized to the household’s first-year use slowly falls behind, the bill creeps back up, and the true-up grows. If use has grown, the fix is a sizing question, not a fault; see adding panels to an existing system and why a bill went up after solar.
Methodology
- Homes
- 79 homes in our Enphase monitoring fleet with a consumption meter whose first clean month came within six months of the system switching on, and at least 24 months of data after it; 18 have a battery. 50 have complete first and second years and 45 complete first and third years.
- Use
- Whole-house electricity use from the consumption meter, by month, with the data checks described in the self-consumption study. Daily use in a month is the month’s total divided by its clean days.
- Years
- Year 1 is the first 12 months from a home’s first clean month; year 2 and year 3 follow. A year counts only when all 12 months are clean.
- Weather adjustment
- For each home, monthly use per day was regressed on cooling degree days, heating degree days (base 65 °F, from ERA5 daily mean temperature at the nearest of four points) and time. Weather-adjusted years remove the cooling and heating terms relative to the home’s average weather; the time term is the trend.
- Context
- SCE residential kWh per account by year, all SCE ZIP codes, from SCE’s quarterly energy data reports.
- Limits
- No data from before installation, so this is not a before-and-after comparison. Appliances, EVs, occupants and ADUs are not observed. Most homes started in 2023.
Sources: Cali Energy monitoring fleet (Enphase consumption meters); ERA5 reanalysis, ECMWF / Copernicus, via Open-Meteo; SCE energy data reports; Y. Qiu, M. E. Kahn and B. Xing, “Quantifying the rebound effects of residential solar panel adoption,” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 96 (2019) 310–341.
Frequently asked questions
Do people use more electricity after installing solar panels?
In our measured homes, many did. Adjusted for weather, the typical home used 6% more in its second year with solar and 10% more by its third than in its first; about a quarter of homes barely changed.
Why did my electricity use go up after solar?
Common reasons are new electric loads such as an EV or heat pump, using more air conditioning when daytime power feels free, and changes in the household. A hotter summer also raises use, so compare years with the weather in mind.
Is the solar rebound effect real?
Research says it can be. A study of 277 Phoenix solar homes found consumption rose about 0.18 kWh for every extra kWh the panels generated, an 18% rebound. Our homes show a rise of similar size, though without data from before installation.
Should I add panels if my use has grown?
If your use is up for good, for example because of an EV, the system you sized for your first year covers less of it. Size an addition from 12 months of recent use.
Does a hot summer explain a higher bill after solar?
Partly. The homes we measured added about 1.6 kWh a day for each degree the daily average rose above 65 °F. Our adjusted figures remove that effect, and use still rose.
More research
Next steps
Has your use grown since you went solar?
Prepared by Cali Energy, October 15, 2026. Figures describe systems in our monitoring fleet and are not a guarantee of what any specific roof will produce; orientation, tilt, shade, equipment and weather change results. Not engineering, financial or utility advice. See our Content Disclaimer.