how many solar panels do I need to power a house?

How many solar panels to buy or have to power our house or home is among the first question we ask ourselves when planning to install solar energy. After securing the number of panels, then we start to think about the cost of each panel. The simple truth here is that our houses differ in size and so is the power of our appliances. So in calculating how many solar panels to power your house, the calculations will be based on how much power we consume on daily basis.

An average homeowner consumes about 1000kwh every month and always needs 16- 20 solar panels to keep the house running on the solar system. Just like I said before, the electricity consumption of each home varies among individuals owning the home. But here on this blog, we are going to talk about how to estimate our monthly or daily electricity consumption. This will help us accurately get how many solar panels our home will need.

The factor that determines how many panels a home needs.

In other to get a correct estimate of the number of solar panels homeowners need to power their homes, the following factors should be considered and looked into. As that will be where the answers to your question lays.

Daily electricity consumption.

This play a big role in considering the number of panels and the watts you shall need to sufficiently power your home always. The more energy you consume the more panels you will need.

Sunlight or weather conditions of the area.

The weather conditions of places differ. Some place experience so many sun lights compare to other places. While some experience dull and cloudy weather. So when your home is located in an area with a high sun rate, you will be expected to have lesser solar panels. As the whole panel will have a high efficiency because of the sunlight.

Panels ratings (watts and Amp).

The solar panels are of different ratings. You buy according to the power ratings that suites for your installation works. When making use of high-rating ones, then you know the pane panels will be fewer than those using lesser ratings.

how to calculate the number of solar panels your house will need.

To determine the number of solar panels to power a house, the following steps will help and give us a guideline to get the best result.

Calculating the energy usage of your home.

The monthly energy consumption of your house should be pan down to make calculations to be more accurate. This can be easily got from your old monthly electricity bills you have been paying. On the bill, write down the total KW you consume for the month. No need to take down the unit charge of the electricity.

It is always advisable to collect the whole bills of the year and add up the KW consume for the whole year and divide by 12. In other to take the average electricity consumption in a year. This is because some seasons demand high running of power appliances to other seasons. During the heat period, we always turn ON the air conditioner unlike during the cold season. So your yearly electricity consumption is the best to start the calculations.

checking for the daily peak sun hours of your house.

This is just the calculation of the intensity of sunlight, your area receives daily. This is to ascertain the quality of solar panels to buy that will suit you well. Places that have high sunlight are on advantage to places with lesser sunlight.

The state in the US has about 120 – 150 average daily peak sun hours. Knowing your daily peak sun hours will help know the how much kilowatts

Determining the size of solar panels to use that will power the house

This stage seems more technical than other, stages, as the size and the rating of the panels to use will be chosen. Most panels have customized power ratings like 100Watts, 150Watts, 200watts, and so on. But still, the number of Kilo-watts of power you need will determine which one to go for and how many it will be.

Tips to consider while choosing solar panels for installation.

For the fact that we have already ascertained the energy, a KW solar panel can generate in your area. calculating the size of panels to cover your house is already made easy.

first of all, is to get the total number of watts you consume per month, and divide it by the monthly peak sun hour of your area.

Let’s say we have a home that consumes 1000kW of power monthly. And have monthly peak sun hours of 154 for our location. Then our solar system size will be;

1000K (power consume in a month ) / 154( monthly peak Sun hours of the area) = 6.49KW of solar panel.

Estimating how many panels to power your house.

At this stage, we can estimate the number of panels and the watts we can use for the installation.

We already know the watts of solar panels to give us our monthly electricity consumption. So we multiply it by 1000 to get the exact power in watts. Then, it will be 6.49KW × 1000 = 6490watts.

Having known, that a total of 6490 watts of solar panels will meet our monthly electricity needs. Then is a question of how many panels should add up to meet the number of watts. There are many watts of solar panels on the market, ranging from 100 watts to 370 watts. So for this particular post, let’s choose 300 watts of solar panels for our estimated planning.

so we divide the total watts of our calculated solar panels (6490watts) by the 300watts. As we agree to make use of 300watts of panels

6490 / 300 = 21.6 number of 300watts is needed to power the house.

From our calculations, it will cost the home 22 × 300watts to substance steady power. Your own home may need a lesser number of panels or higher. It all depends on the amount of energy you are consuming monthly.

how much space do I need to install solar panels that will power a house?

Do you have enough space to contain the whole panel that will be powering your house? How many spaces will it need? And is the space good enough for sun penetration? These are the question that always runs through our mind each time we want to install solar panels. Because of those questions, I have made in this post, the size of space to accommodate our solar panels.

The most common and reliable place to mount the panels is on the rooftop of your house. But when the roof is not accessible for installation, it can also be installed on a field. When the spaces for the installation are limited, high-efficiency solar panels should be considered. As they take little space compared to others.

An average number of solar panels is needed for a different power of the solar system.

Below are the estimated power size and the amount of power solar panels arry will produce to meet up the demand.