How much are you paying for solar electricity?
Compare per kWh costs from your solar directly to your utility rates
Your per kWh costs
These are your per kWh costs for electricity from your solar system. If these are greater than your utility rate, then switching to solar is not financially beneficial for you. If these are less than your utility rate, you may save money by switching to solar. However, these numbers are costs only, to calculate your financial returns you also need to take into account your net metering and self consumption rates.
These numbers are not your financial returns from solar, for this you will need to take into account your utility rate, net metering or similar programs like NEM and how much you self-consume. Go here for a more accurate calculator.
The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is the unit cost of electricity that you're paying based on the upfront costs of your solar system. This number takes into account the time value of money and spreading out the upfront cost across the lifetime of the system. You can compare this number directly against your utility rate.
The nominal LCOE does not take into account inflation, while the real LCOE takes inflation into account. This matter because in general inflation is positive, which means the purchasing power (value) of your money goes down over time. The real LCOE takes this "cost of inflation" into account and is therefore more illustrative of the "true" cost of your electricity.