I am wanting to know how to figure out how much power I would need to produce to run a house on solar. Like how many Kilowatts or whatever.
It is a different answer for a grid-connected (grid-tie) home and for a off-grid home (not connected to the utility grid)
For the off-grid home the solar system must be able to generate during day light enough electrical energy to supply the house consumption over day and night. Start from your monthly electrical consumption in KWh. Divide it by 30 to get your daily average consumption and divide it by 6 hours (assuming 6 hours of useful sun presence) to get the required size of the panels. Then calculate the size of the deep cycle batteries that will store electrical energy for your night consumption. For more details view http://www.solar-energy-for-home.com/off-grid-solar-power.html
If your home is grid connected you don’t really need to size the solar panels to supply 100% of your consumption because the utility will supply the difference. Size the system based on the size of roof you can allocate and to fit your budget (assume $7-$8 per watt for a crude estimate)
3 responses to How can I figure out how much power my house uses for solar?
To find this, you can look at your electric bill and see how many kilowatt-hours you used last month. Divide that by the number of days and the number of hours of good sunlight you have in a day, and that’s the approximate wattage you’ll need from solar panels.
Example- you used 1,000 kwH last month, and there were 30 days in the month. That gives an average of 33.3 kwH/day, and if you have 8 hours of really good sunlight, that’s about 4 kilowatts of solar panels required.
You would need more than that since it’s not 100% efficient to store the electricity in batteries for the night, and often you don’t get the same price selling electricity back to your utility company as when you buy it.
I figured this out once for my apartment, and it was over $30,000 worth of panels to meet my needs.
References :
http://us.sunpowercorp.com/residential/
http://www.findsolar.com/index.php?page=rightforme
has a calculator, but you need to know your "Electricity Offset"
http://www.solar-estimate.org/?page=rightforme
may work better
References :
Searched "solar power calculator"
It is a different answer for a grid-connected (grid-tie) home and for a off-grid home (not connected to the utility grid)
For the off-grid home the solar system must be able to generate during day light enough electrical energy to supply the house consumption over day and night. Start from your monthly electrical consumption in KWh. Divide it by 30 to get your daily average consumption and divide it by 6 hours (assuming 6 hours of useful sun presence) to get the required size of the panels. Then calculate the size of the deep cycle batteries that will store electrical energy for your night consumption. For more details view http://www.solar-energy-for-home.com/off-grid-solar-power.html
If your home is grid connected you don’t really need to size the solar panels to supply 100% of your consumption because the utility will supply the difference. Size the system based on the size of roof you can allocate and to fit your budget (assume $7-$8 per watt for a crude estimate)
References :
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