Going solar is a great way to lower your power bills and do your bit for the environment. If you are thinking about switching to solar power in your home, you are probably wondering how many solar panels you will need to meet your energy needs.
Below, you will find some important information that should help you to calculate how many panels you need to ensure your system has enough capacity to run your home before you talk to your local solar installer about having them fitted.
Understanding your power usage
In order to determine the size of your solar PV system, you first need to understand your power usage as how many panels you will need depends on how much energy you typically use.
The average Aussie home uses 15–20kWh of power each day, but if you have more or less people living with you than average or you use more or less power than average your power usage could vary significantly, so it is important to think about how many people are in your home, how often you use the power and how this might change going forward in the future. Your energy bills should help you to determine this.
Solar panel output options
To get the most out of solar panels, you should aim to provide coverage for as much of your property as possible. To this end, there are a number of output options available, with the most common being 6.6kW systems, however, you can also find systems that offer 8 and 10kWs too, which would be ideal if you had a bigger property.
Installation considerations
A number of factors can affect how many solar panels you will need for your home, including:
How much roof space you have available
Location (North-facing is more efficient but not always practical)
Issue with shade
Calculating the size of your solar energy system
Once you know how much power you typically use, you can work out how many panels you need based on their individual output. For every kilowatt, solar panels are able to produce, on average, 4kilowatt hours of energy in a single day.
Most solar panels for domestic use have between 1 and 4kilowatts each, so in order to work out the number of solar panels you will need, you can simply divide the number of kilowatt hours you need by the number of kilowatts each panel outputs to give you a rough guide. There are also online calculators that can help you determine how many panels your system will require.
Conclusion
Calculating how many solar panels you need is much more about ensuring that you have a large enough energy output to meet your needs, and the above information should help you to determine that. If you need more help with this, however, your local solar installer will be able to calculate your energy requirements, and the number of solar panels you need, for you to ensure you always have enough energy to run your home as you wish.