How Many Solar Panels To Get 20 Gigawatt Hours

For the sake of example if you are getting 5 hours of direct sunlight per day in a sunny state like california you can calculate your solar panel output this way.

How many solar panels to get 20 gigawatt hours.

5 megawatts of power being used continually for 2 hours. 5 hours x 290 watts an example wattage of a premium solar panel 1 450 watts hours or roughly 1 5 kilowatt hours kwh. Starting with some conservative assumptions from a 2013 national renewable energy labs nrel report we know that it takes on average 3 4 acres of solar panels to generate a gigawatt hour of electricity over a year. 8 76 kw grid tied solar system with solaredge and 24 astronergy solar 365 watt panels wss solaredge gridtie system for 24 astronergy 72 cell modules 12 406 00.

A home that consumes 1 000 kwh per month will normally need between 20 and 30 solar panels. Energy information administration in 2018 the average monthly electricity consumption for a home in the united states was 914 kwh per month or about 30 5 kwh per day and 11 000 kwh per year. Why are solar systems sold in kilowatts. A gigawatt is 1 000 0000 000 or 1 billion watts of power.

The level of efficiency causes a significant difference in solar farm land requirements between crystalline and thin film technology. Thus the output for each solar panel in your array would. The exact number changes depending on the specifications of the chosen panel model as well as the sunshine available at the project site. Before purchasing a solar energy system for your home an important step is finding out how many solar panels you need.

How many solar panels do i need for 1 000 kwh per month. So a system of 20 x 250 watt solar panels will be sold as a 5 kw system. A kilowatt hour is equivalent to a steady power of one kilowatt running for one hour and is equivalent to 3 6 million joules or 3 6 megajoules. But every home is unique and could use more or less power than the average home.

Crystalline solar panels have around 18 of efficiency level while the thin film technology offers approximately 12 efficiency. The most accurate way to determine how many solar panels you need is to determine how many kilowatt hours you used in the last 12 months. We re able to pinpoint right down to within literally the hundreds of kilowatt hours a year we can offset if you tell us how much you used last year. Fewer solar panels then mean less land space used.

However this does not mean that at any one time it will be producing 5 kw of instantaneous power or that.