STANFORD, Calif. (KGO) — A new study from Stanford is providing strong evidence about the efficiency of a popular source of clean energy.

If it’s in your home and runs on electricity, you’ll probably find it in the Stanford Bits and Watts lab. And that includes solar panels to help power and test consumer appliances.

“Yeah, the solar array is on the rooftop, and it has an inverter,” said Professor Ram Rajagopal, Ph.D.

Rajagopol took us behind the scenes to help explain a newly released study on the cost-effectiveness of residential solar panels paired with a battery system. It found that roughly 60% of families could reduce their power bills with a solar/battery system, seeing savings of roughly 15%. Enough, according to the Stanford team, to account for installation and other costs.

“When you adopt solar in storage, you will be able to reduce your bill and produce bill savings. And that at the very least, these bill savings can help pay the system for its cost of installation and maintenance. And once it pays for itself, whenever you have an outage. Since solar and batteries can store energy and release them as you’re utilizing them during the day, they can provide a backup for your critical loads,” Rajagopal said.

MORE: Trump administration budget bill threatens future of clean energy sector

The lab measures home energy use in the minutest detail, looking for costs and savings.

“And if we can control the power of a water heater, that can provide a lot of useful flexibility to the grid,” said team member Aaron Goldin, Ph.D., demonstrating another of the group’s projects.

The team believes the new solar study is one of the most thorough calculations done on the true cost benefit of solar.

Lead author Tao Sun says the study leverages data from roughly 500,000 households, noting their access to both solar panels and battery storage as well as other key factors.

“We want to make it as real as possible. So, that means whatever data is available, like electricity rates, like local power outage history. Like the technology cost in different states. Also the individual electricity consumption pattern of each household,” Sun said.

MORE: Lawsuit over extra energy reimbursements to solar panel owners heads to CA Supreme Court

But the report comes at a time when some believe renewable energy is under attack, including the Trump administration’s plan to roll back valuable clean energy tax credits that can cut anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 off the cost of a solar-battery installation. How does that affect the bottom line? It helps to remember that 60% affordability number we mentioned at the top of the story.

“When the subsidies go away, that number falls to 38% or 39%. So that’s a substantial loss,” Rajagopal said.

Put simply, tipping the solar scale. Cutting an energy source that was affordable for six out of 10 households down to roughly four out of 10. But the Stanford team believes time is still on the side of solar. With costs of materials and technologies projected to drop significantly moving forward.

Esports pioneer aims to make solar power affordable to all

As ABC7 News celebrates Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May, we are featuring AAPI Impact Makers in various fields. Kevin Chou is our Innovation Impact Leader.

“These technologies are expected to reduce cost as the manufacturing processes get better and so on, using the existing, you know, technology learning curves. In about, I think six to eight years, we basically reach the same exact point where we are today,” he said.

So, at the end of the day, the sun isn’t setting on residential solar power — even if some passing clouds do darken the landscape — at least for a few years to come.

The Stanford team also looks at other not-so-obvious savings from solar, such as lowering potential wildfire risk in remote areas that would require long power lines to deliver electricity.