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A typical home in western Washington uses about 10,800 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year. If you add in an electric car, that will increase to about 14,400 kWh.

Solar panels in western Washington produce about 1,100 kWh per year, per installed kilowatt (kW) of capacity. To fully power a house and a car, you’d need to install about 13 kW of solar generation capacity.

Here in Washington, net metering utility rate tariffs allow you to feed excess power to the grid and be paid for it, so, for that typical home, installing 13 kW of solar power would reduce your combined electric a...