RSS FeedsHow do you calculate how much energy solar panels create in a month?
I am doing research on solar panels and I am having trouble figuring out how much energy each one can produce in a given span of time. Knowing this would help me to approximate how many I would need to offset certain consumers in my home.
Lucky you! The National Renewable Energy Lab has already created an application to do pretty much what you’re looking for. It’s called pvwatts, and is linked below.
What you do is click on the map for the city nearest you, then enter the size of your proposed array, it’s tilt, and orientation. You’ll get a month-by-month printout of the expected energy output. This is based on historical measurements over almost 40 years, so takes into account local climate, such as fog, rain, and altitude.
If there is no reference city near you, you can still use another version of the program to do predictions for an arbitrary location.
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July 20th, 2009
Try getting ahold of your local power co. or energy co-op, they can probably get you some ans.
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July 20th, 2009
Just do a search fo solar panels. Each one will have a peak wattage output. A simple way is to assume the sun shines every day and the sun is at peak angle about 7 hours a day.
For a 100 watt panel = 30days X 7 hr/dy X 100 watts/hr = 21,000 watt/hours, or 21 Kilowatt-hours.
The average cost of power in the U.S. is 10 cents per Kilowatt-hour. Your panel saved about $2.00 operating a month. This is why you do not see Solar systems used very much. It takes huge subsidies to make it cost-effective in most applications.
Solar is great. If you can do it just to save pollution, then do it. Please don’t lie to people about it’s performance and cost.
References :
July 20th, 2009
There are so many factors that will determine how much the panels will produce on any given day. I can tell you about my production. I have a 3.74 kw dc system, I live in a sunny state and in the summer I average 35 kwh per day, so 1085 kwh per month, divide that by 19 panels and each panel produces about 57 kwh per month. In the winter I’ve seen days where the whole system only generated 2 kwh and my average is 12 kwh per day, so about 372 kwh per month and under 20 kwh per month per panel. This is just in general because I don’t have optimum orientation and I have a few panels that get a little shade for a few hours a day.
References :
July 20th, 2009
Lucky you! The National Renewable Energy Lab has already created an application to do pretty much what you’re looking for. It’s called pvwatts, and is linked below.
What you do is click on the map for the city nearest you, then enter the size of your proposed array, it’s tilt, and orientation. You’ll get a month-by-month printout of the expected energy output. This is based on historical measurements over almost 40 years, so takes into account local climate, such as fog, rain, and altitude.
If there is no reference city near you, you can still use another version of the program to do predictions for an arbitrary location.
References :
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/codes_algs/PVWATTS/