5 simple tips to help you work out what kind and what size Solar System to buy.
Understanding what a "Solar System" is made up of.
A Solar System is compiled of three main parts. A battery, inverter and solar panels, which work together to form the system.
Solar panels are those black rectangular panels that are attached to your roof to harness and convert the suns rays into DC (Direct current) electricity.
An Inverter is an electrical box which receives the DC electricity from the solar panels and converters the DC electricity into AC (Alternating Current) electricity which is the kind of electricity that comes out your plugs and is used to charge the batteries.
A Battery for a solar system can range vastly in different sizes depending on what needs to be powered. The Battery is charged up by either municipal electricity or the electricity you generated from your solar panels. A battery is what stores the electricity which is used to power your house when the sun is down or when there is a power outage/load shedding.
Tip #1 - Your past utility bill (COJ) will tell you how much electricity you used in kWh (Kilowatt hours)
You can calculate how many solar panels you need by taking your daily average (provided on your COJ bill) and dividing it by 5.5 (Peak sunlight hours) to work out how many watts you need to generate per hour.
Lets work out mine...
Daily avg 23.586kWh divided by 5.5 = 4.288kWh
Therefore I would need to generate a minimum of 4.288kWh from my solar panels in order for my house to withstand my electricity demand.
So now knowing know much power I need to generate during peak hours, I need to find out how many panels I need and how many watts each panel needs to be. You can work this out doing a simple calculation of dividing your hourly average by how many panels you think you can fit on your roof. (this number needs to be even and most commonly in a range of between 6 and 14)
So lets work out mine again...
Take my hourly average of 4.288kWh and multiply by 1000 to know much many watts I need.
4.288kWh x 1000 = 4288Wh and divide this number by the amount of panels (in my case 10)
4288Wh/10 = 428watt per panel needed.
Now I know that I need 10 x 428watt panels, minimum to power my house. I would always choose to spec the panels a little bit stronger in case of loses. So I would personally choose to install 10 x 450w solar panels to be confidant that my house will run smoothly through the not so sunny days or if I'm using more power that day.
*NB The size, amount of shade and direction of your roof will also factor into how many panels will be needed.
****This is where I have done up to so far****
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