What Size Solar Panel System Do I Need for My Home?

Sizing the solar panels system is one of the most challenging aspects of deciding to install a Solar Panel System on your home, particularly if you are installing in a new building or if you do not know how much electricity your home uses.

In such scenarios, how do you decide how many solar panels or how much solar energy you will use? If you know your energy consumption habits or have knowledge of your energy bills, estimating annual energy use on average is easy. And thereby, you will be able to build the right size solar panel system.

If you partner with a professional solar retailer/installer, they will be able to help you sort through these options and choose the best system suitable for your needs. However, a little homework will not hurt. So, here are some simple directions to assist you in sizing your solar system:

1. Look at Your Electricity Bills

To get a clear idea of where to start, look at your most recent energy bill. Most energy providers have a graph on the bill that displays an average daily electricity consumption for the past one year. An energy-efficient Australian three-bedroom home will normally use between 15 and 25 kilowatt-hours (kWh) a day with reasonable use of air conditioning.

Then, you can estimate how much solar energy you can expect to produce if you go solar; a tool like PVWatts lets you adjust for variables like your system size and location.

2. Calculate How Much Energy You Use During the Day

If there is no storage battery included in your solar panel system installation, this pointer is critical to measure. Solar panels can only provide electricity for household usage during the daylight hours and grid electricity will have to be used during the night. Hence, an approximate estimation of how much energy a home consumes during the day will help to find out what size device can better suit your needs. For that, you can follow the below points:

• Look up the optimum daylight hours on a sun-hours map to see how many hours per day the sun provides the most sunshine.
• Write down the daily average of peak sun hours in the area closest to you.

3. Examine the Size of the Storage Battery

Unfortunately, the sun does not always shine, particularly in the night, possibly requiring usage of additional lighting. On a sunny day, solar panels can provide a lot of electricity, that can be stored in batteries to keep the lights on at night, or in the winter, even when the sun isn’t shining bright.

However, whether to opt for a storage battery or not is completely up to you. So, in case if you go for a storage battery, it will have a huge impact on the size and cost of the system.

Without the use of a battery, the energy produced by your Solar Panels can only be used on-demand. However, if a backup battery is installed, any electricity that is not used during the day will be stored for later usage.

4. Decide if You Want to go “Off the grid” or “On the grid”

There are a few things to consider when deciding on battery storage for your solar system. What are your objectives in building batteries, for example – do you want to go ‘off the grid,’ or just conserve some of your solar energy for use at night? If you go for a solar panel that isn’t connected to the grid and doesn’t have a battery, you’ll only have power on sunny days.

If you opt on the grid, whether the solar system is generating or if you have batteries, you will always have access to electricity (unless the grid goes down). So, your system size will vary depending on what you choose.

However, these aren’t the only things to keep in mind when sizing a solar system; each case is unique, and there are a variety of solar PV system sizing techniques. Your specific energy demands, budget, and solar energy objectives will all influence the scale of the system you create. To bring the most to your grid-tie solar system, you can contact us.

At Sunburn Solar, we are committed to bringing the most cost-effective solar panels solutions to our clients and to expanding our presence year after year by providing our services to both residentials and commercial markets.

Are you Looking for Trusted Solar Panels Installation Melbourne? call on 1300 673 166 and get in touch with our solar experts.