If you’re considering solar power for your home, you may be wondering what size solar system you need. The answer depends on a number of factors, including the size of your home, your energy usage, and your location. Use this guide to determine what size solar system you need for your home.
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Introduction
The average U.S. home uses about 900 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per month. Solar panels usually produce about 1 kilowatt (1,000 watts) of power under ideal conditions, so you’d need 9 solar panels to generate enough power for an average home.
However, the amount of electricity your solar panels produce depends on many factors, including:
– The amount of sunlight your location receives
– The angle at which your panels are installed
– The type of solar panel you have
– Whether your panels are clean or covered in dust or snow
In most cases, you won’t be able to generate enough power to cover all of your energy needs with solar panels alone. However, you can offset a portion of your energy use by installing a smaller solar system and supplementing the rest of your power with electricity from the utility company.
What size solar system do I need?
The size of the solar system you will need will depend on a few things.
How much electricity do I use?
To estimate the size of system you’ll need, you first need to calculate your average daily kWh consumption. This is the amount of power you use on a daily basis, averaged out over the course of a year. You can find your past electricity bills and look for the “kWh” usage column, or you can use an online energy consumption calculator like this one from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Once you have your average daily kWh consumption number, multiply it by 0.25 to get a rough estimate of the size solar PV system you’ll need to completely offset your electricity usage (i.e., a “100% offset”). This number represents how much electricity your solar PV system would need to generate on average every day in order to equal your total electricity consumption for that day.
Of course, actual solar production will vary day-to-day and month-to-month depending on the amount of sun exposure your location receives. That’s why most solar PV systems are sized to offset only a portion of their owner’s total electricity usage (usually around 80%). This allows for some wiggle room in the event that production falls short on particularly cloudy or shading days/months, while still providing substantial savings on electric bills.
What do I want to power with solar?
The first step in sizing your home solar system is understanding your energy usage. Your electricity bill will give you a good starting point. It will list the amount of kilowatt-hours (kWh) you used last month. In addition to looking at your past energy usage, you should also consider any changes you might make in the future that would affect your energy usage, like adding an electric vehicle or adding new appliances.
Once you have a good understanding of your past and future energy usage, you can begin to size your home solar system. Solar panel output is typically given in watts (W). Most home solar systems are between 3 kW and 10 kW. To find out how many solar panels you will need for your home solar system, divide the total watts by 265 (the average wattage of a solar panel). This will give you a rough estimate of the number of solar panels required to meet 100% of your energy needs.
For example, let’s say your home uses 9,000 kWh of electricity per year and you want to size your home solar system to cover 100% of that usage. Dividing 9,000 by 265 gives us 34, which means you would need about 34 solar panels to meet 100% of your energy needs.
It’s important to remember that this is just a rough estimate. The final number of solar panels needed for your home will depend on other factors like the efficiency of the solar panels, the orientation and tilt of your roof, shading from trees or other buildings, and local climate conditions.
What is my average sun exposure?
Your average sun exposure, also known as solar radiation, is the amount of sunlight that hits a square metre of your roof in a day. It’s expressed as an average number of kilowatt hours per day per square metre (kWh/m2/day).
You can find out your average daily solar radiation by using a solar radiation map for your area. In the United Kingdom, the Solar Energy Society has a handy online tool that lets you input your postcode to find out your average solar radiation.
Once you know your average daily solar radiation, you can estimate the amount of power you could generate from a solar PV system. A 1kWp (kilowatt peak) system will generate about 900-1,100 kWh of electricity a year in the UK (depending on location), so you would need around 9-11m2 of roof space to generate all the electricity you need for an average home.
What is the climate where I live?
Climate has a significant impact on the amount of sunlight available for solar power, and therefore the size of system you’ll need. For example, if you live in an area with lots of sunny days, you’ll need a smaller system than if you live in a cloudy or shady area. Use the map below to find out how much sunlight your location gets on average.
Conclusion
Now that we’ve gone over the basics of sizing a solar PV system for your home or business, it’s time to get started. The first step is to find out how much electricity you use in a year, which you can do by talking to your energy provider or looking at your past energy bills. Once you have that number, you can use a solar calculator like the ones on EnergySage to determine the right system size and price for you.
