Guide to Sizing Solar Panel Systems
Solar panel systems are definitely a green way to provide your home with energy. With most governments offering subsidies and tax breaks to homeowners who choose to install solar power systems, the cost of installing residential solar panel systems is significantly reduced. While solar panel systems can provide a major percentage of your household’s energy needs, properly sizing solar panel systems is necessary. In this post, we provide you with a simple, no-nonsense guide to sizing solar panel systems for your home.
Solar Panel Systems Guide
1. Get a clear idea of your household’s energy needs so that you have a baseline for the target capacity of the solar panel system that you need. Gather all of your electric bills for the last 12 months and look them over. If you do not have all of these bills filed, you can ask your utility company to provide some duplicate copies from their records. You could also look them up on your online account, if you have one.
2. On a piece of paper, jot down the number of kilowatt hours consumed for each month. There will be peaks and dips from one month to another, notably during the summer and winter months.
January – 469
February – 489
March – 374… and so on until
December – 469
3. Compute for your average monthly kilowatt hours by adding up all the monthly totals and then dividing it by 12.
4. Once you have figured out your average monthly consumption in kilowatt hours, divide this figure by the average hours of sunlight that you receive in your area every month to derive the kilowatt size needed for your solar panel system. Generally, this is determined by using the following guide:
a. Coastal areas – 150 sun hours in a month
b. Mountain areas – 155 hours of sun in a month
c. Sunny areas – 160 hours of sun in a month
If your average monthly consumption is, for example, 347 kW and you leave it a mountain area: 347 divided by 155 will give you 2.2kW. This means that you need to install a solar system that has a capacity of 2.2 kW.
5. Since producing one kW of energy requires about 90 solar panels, you need to figure out how many solar panels you need to install by multiplying the target capacity to 90. Therefore, 2.2 x 90 = 198. This means that you will need to install 198 solar panels in order to produce the 2.2 kW you need for your home.
Of course, this guide assumes that you will be using the solar panel system to provide all of your home’s energy needs. Most homeowners just start off with producing only about 50 to 80% of their household energy consumption.
