Jason Svarc is an accredited solar and battery specialist who has been designing and installing solar and battery systems for over a decade. He is also a qualified engineer and taught the off-grid solar design course at Swinburne University (Tafe). Having designed and commissioned hundreds of solar Contact online >>
Jason Svarc is an accredited solar and battery specialist who has been designing and installing solar and battery systems for over a decade. He is also a qualified engineer and taught the off-grid solar design course at Swinburne University (Tafe). Having designed and commissioned hundreds of solar systems for households and businesses, he has gained vast experience and knowledge of what is required to build quality, reliable, high-performance solar power systems.
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The exact number you need will depend on the size of your home and your electricity usage. If you can handle a little math, some number crunching will get you to a reasonable estimate. If math isn''t your strong suit, don''t sweat it. We''ll make it as straightforward as we can.
Before we start, you''ll need your electric bill, ideally with information about your electricity consumption over the past year. You can start with 400 watts as a placeholder for wattage per panel. If you already have a specific solar panel in mind, identify its wattage and use that number instead. Once you have those two figures, you can start working on an estimate.
The number of solar panels you need depends on a few key factors, including your electricity consumption, geographic location, and individual panel specifications.
You can calculate how many solar panels you need by dividing your yearly electricity usage by your area''s production ratio and then dividing that number by the power output of your solar panels.
Calculating how many solar panels you''ll need to meet your energy needs depends on several factors. The easiest way to find out how many panels you''ll need is to use our Solar Calculator. When you put in your address and estimated monthly power bill, we''ll do all of the math for you so that you can make an informed decision. If you''d like to do those calculations, we''ve explained our formula below to help.
The formula we used to estimate the number of solar panels you need to power your home depends on these critical factors. Here are the assumptions we made and how we did our math:
Your annual electricity usage is the energy you use in your home over a year. Measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh), this number is influenced by the appliances in your home that use electricity and how often you use them. Refrigerators, air conditioning units, small kitchen appliances, lights, chargers, and more all use electricity.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the average American household uses 10,791 kWh of electricity per year (or about 900 kWh per month), so we''ll use that number as the ideal solar panel system or solar array size, which would mean you could offset 100% of your electricity usage and utility bill with solar panels (in practice, it''s not this neat, but bear with us here).
To get a more exact number based on how much energy you use, check last year''s electric bills to determine your average electricity consumption. Once you have that number, plug it into the equations below.
Also known as a solar panel''s power rating, panel wattage is the electricity output of a specific solar panel under ideal conditions. Wattage is measured in watts (W). Most solar panels fall in the 300 to 400+ W power range. We''ll use 400-watt panels in these calculations because 390-400 W is the most quoted capacity range on the EnergySage Marketplace, according to our latest Solar and Storage Marketplace Report.
A solar panel system''s production ratio is its estimated energy output over time (kWh) relative to its actual system size (W). These numbers are rarely 1:1. Your production ratio will change depending on how many hours of sunlight your system will get (primarily based on your geographic location).
For example, a 10 kW system that produces 14 MWh (14,000 kWh) of electricity in a year has a production ratio of 1.4 (14/10 = 1.4). This is an entirely realistic production ratio to see in the real world. In the U.S., production ratios are usually between 0.9 and 1.6, so we''ll use those two numbers as the high and low estimates for our calculation.
We have our three main assumptions (energy use, solar panel wattage, and production ratios)—so how do those numbers translate to an estimated number of solar panels for your home? The formula looks like this, as shown above:
which gives us between 17 and 30 panels in a solar array, depending on which production ratio we use (17 for a 1.6 ratio and 30 for a 0.9 ratio). If we use California as an example (average production ratio of 1.5), you''ll need about 18 panels, resulting in a system size of 7.2 kW.
There is a consideration for how many solar panels to buy without including cost. Solar panels cost $2.75/W on average. The total average cost of an installation is $20,948 for an 11 kW system (the average quoted system size on EnergySage) after accounting for the 30% federal solar tax credit.
This varies widely depending on location, installation cost, and incentives, with warmer climates being cheaper but needing more panels and vice versa for colder climates. Check out the two examples below:
About 600 kWh solar cell
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