How To Size A Solar Panel System

How many solar panels does the average house need? How many solar panels do I demand for a 3-bedchamber house? How many solar panels do I need for a 2000 sq. ft. home? These are all common questions for an aspiring solar homeowner. Determining how many solar panels you'll demand for your dwelling house requires beginning knowing what your goals are.

Do yous want to minimize your carbon footprint? Maximize the return on your investment? Save as much money every bit possible?

Most people desire to salvage money while minimizing their environmental touch.

To summate how many solar panels you need, yous demand to know:

Your average energy requirements
Your current free energy use in watts
The climate and amount sunlight in your area
The efficiency of the solar panels you're because
The physical size of the solar panels you lot're considering

1 uncomplicated way of answering the "How many solar panels do I need" question is to consult a professional person solar installer, who can give y'all a free home solar evaluation.

How much solar ability will y'all need?

To determine your home's average free energy requirements, look at past utility bills. You lot tin summate how many solar panels y'all need by multiplying your household'south hourly energy requirement past the peak sunlight hours for your surface area and dividing that by a panel's wattage. Use a low-wattage (150 W) and high-wattage (370 W) example to found a range (ex: 17-42 panels to generate 11,000 kWh/twelvemonth). Note that the size of your roof and how much sunlight your roof gets are factors equally well.

If you piece of work with an experienced solar installer, they will handle all these calculations for you. If you're searching for a calculator to effigy out "how many solar panels do I need?", look no farther. You tin use SunPower Design Studio to estimate your ain organization size, monthly savings, and the actual appearance of a solar assortment on your own roof. This interactive tool provides a solar estimate in but a few seconds and tin can exist done on your ain or on a call with a SunPower (800) 786-7693.

How many watts exercise y'all currently utilize?

Wait at your electricity bill for boilerplate usage. Expect for "Kilowatt Hours (or kWh) Used" or something like, and then note the length of time represented (commonly 30 days). If your bill doesn't show kilowatt hours used, look for beginning and ending meter readings and subtract the previous reading from the near recent one.

You want daily and hourly usage for our calculations, and then if your pecker doesn't show a daily average, simply separate the monthly or annual average by xxx or 365 days, respectively, so carve up once again by 24 to determine your hourly average electricity usage. Your answer volition exist in kW. (And just in case you're wondering, a kilowatt-hour is how much ability yous are using at whatsoever given fourth dimension multiplied by the total time the power is being used.)

A modest domicile in a temperate climate might use something like 200 kWh per calendar month, and a larger dwelling in the south where air conditioners account for the largest portion of dwelling free energy usage might use two,000 kWh or more. The average U.South. home uses about 900 kWh per month. Then that's 30 kWh per day or 1.25 kWh per 60 minutes.

Your average daily energy usage is your target daily boilerplate to calculate your solar needs. That's the number of kilowatt-hours you demand your solar organization to produce if you want to encompass most if non all of your electricity needs.

Information technology's important to note that solar panels don't operate at maximum efficiency 24 hours a day. (Encounter Solar 101: How Does Solar Free energy Work?). Weather conditions, for example, tin temporarily reduce your system's efficiency. Therefore, experts recommend adding a 25 percentage "cushion" to your target daily average to ensure you can generate all the clean energy you need.

How many hours of sunlight can y'all wait in your area?

The peak sunlight hours for your detail location will have a direct impact on the energy you can await your home solar system to produce. For example, if you live in Phoenix y'all can expect to have a greater number of height sunlight hours than if you lived in Seattle. That doesn't mean a Seattle homeowner can't go solar; information technology just means the homeowner would need more panels.

The Renewable Resources Data Center provides sunlight information past state and for major cities.

Now multiply your hourly usage (see question No. one) by i,000 to convert your hourly ability generation need to watts. Divide your average hourly wattage requirement by the number of daily peak sunlight hours for your surface area. This gives you the amount of free energy your panels need to produce every hr. So the average U.S. home (900 kWh/month) in an area that gets five peak sunlight hours per day would need 6,000 watts.

What affects solar panel output efficiency?

Here's where solar panel quality makes a difference. Not all solar panels are alike. Photovoltaic (PV) solar panels (most ordinarily used in residential installations) come in wattages ranging from almost 150 watts to 370 watts per panel, depending on the console size and efficiency (how well a panel is able to convert sunlight into energy), and on the cell technology.

For example, solar cells with no filigree lines on the front (like SunPower^® Maxeon^® cells) absorb more sunlight than conventional cells and practise non suffer from issues such every bit delamination (peeling). The construction of our cells makes them stronger and more than resistant to smashing or corrosion. And a microinverter on each console can optimize ability conversion at the source, in contrast to i large inverter mounted on the side of the firm.

Because of these broad variations in quality and efficiency, it's difficult to generalize nearly which solar panels are right for you lot or how many you'll need for your home. The main takeaway is that the more than efficient the panels are, the more wattage they can produce, and the fewer you volition demand on your roof to get the same energy output. Conventional solar panels usually produce about 250 watts per panel, with varying levels of efficiency. In contrast, SunPower panels are known to exist the most efficient solar panels on the market place.*

To figure out how many solar panels you lot demand, split up your habitation'due south hourly wattage requirement (see question No. 3) past the solar panels' wattage to calculate the total number of panels you demand.

So that boilerplate U.Southward. dwelling in Dallas, Texas, would need well-nigh 25 conventional (250 W) solar panels or 17 SunPower (370 W) panels.

What is the effect of solar panel size?

If you take a pocket-size or unusually shaped roof, solar panel size and numbers are important considerations. With a large usable roof area, perhaps yous can cede some efficiency and buy more larger panels (at a lower cost per panel) to become to your target free energy output. But if your usable roof area is limited, or if information technology'south partially shaded, being able to utilise fewer smaller high efficiency panels may be the best way to brand the nearly possible ability over the long term, ultimately saving yous more money.

Solar console dimensions

Typical residential solar panel dimensions today are about 65 inches by 39 inches, or 5.iv feet by 3.25 feet, with some variation among manufacturers. SunPower panels are 61.3 inches by 41.2 inches.

These dimensions have remained more-or-less unchanged for decades, simply the efficiency and output from that same footprint have changed dramatically for the better. In addition, SunPower designs entire systems to have well-nigh no gaps between panels and uses invisible framing and mounting hardware to proceed the rooftop footprint as tight, efficient and bonny as possible.

How much practise solar panels counterbalance?

If you're planning on installing a rooftop solar system, agreement the weight of your solar panels is some other key factor to consider. Knowing a solar console's weight is the best way to be certain that your roof can support a full installation.

While panel weights vary from brand to brand, well-nigh panels weigh about forty pounds.

SunPower panels are the lightest of all major brands*, with some of our panels weighing as lilliputian every bit 33 pounds. For comparison, at the top end of the range some conventional panels counterbalance as much as 50 pounds.

Summary: How many panels do you demand?

Knowing the answers to the higher up questions will requite you an idea of the ideal number of panels for your electricity generation needs — or at to the lowest degree a realistic range. Side by side, a professional installer needs to assess your roof architecture, angle to the sun and other factors to see if and how you'd be able to physically arrange the right number of panels on your roof to achieve your daily energy production goals.

You should also consider net metering as yous're considering how much coin you'll save and make from your solar organisation. Internet metering is how your utility company credits you for producing excess solar energy when the sun is shining and then lets you draw from those credits when yous're using conventional power grid at night, if you don't store your excess solar free energy in a bombardment storage system.

To get started, bank check out our solar reckoner, which can help you figure out how much you might save going solar.

Related posts

Solar 101: How Does Solar Energy Work?
How a Southern California Family Went Solar to Save on Summer Electric Bills
How Home Solar Panels are Installed

Interested in loftier efficiency solar panels for your home? Contact SunPower for more information.

How To Size A Solar Panel System,

Source: https://us.sunpower.com/how-many-solar-panels-do-you-need-panel-size-and-output-factors#:~:text=You%20can%20calculate%20how%20many,generate%2011%2C000%20kWh%2Fyear).

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