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With America’s change of government has come a larger interest in people wanting to use solar power at home, to aid global warming and save on their increasing electricity bills.
But how much solar panel watt power do we need to say halve our power bills? And how much will that power cost us to install?
Here is a simple 4-step formula to help you calculate your home’s solar panel watt requirements and costs:
1 – Calculate Daily Power Used:
Your first step is to work out the average daily kilowatt hours (kWh) used. This can be done by looking back at your last twelve months power bills, and see how much power used per month, and get the monthly average. This will give you a better estimate of your average power needs by eliminating the effect of the seasons. It is calculated by adding up all 12 bills and dividing the total power used by 12. If you do not have the the past year’s bills, then look at your most recent one.
Then divide your monthly usage by 30 (the average number of days in a month, to get your daily power used.
- Here is an example: Lets say the power used last month was 800 kWh. Your average daily usage would be 800/30 = 26.7 kWh per day.
- Now if you want to only halve your power bill then you need to produce 26.7 / 2 = 13.4 kWh of solar panel watt power per day.
2 – Calculate Total Solar Panel Watt Needs:
To do this, you first need to determine how many usable hours of sunlight your area receives per day. This is where a solar insolation map comes in handy – you can view one from our original article on our website.
Now take the average daily kWh calculation and divide that by the number of daily usable sunlight hours, then multiply that by 1.25 (to take into account the wasted energy from wiring, charge controllers. batteries, and inverters).
- From the previous example, if you live near California where the average daily usable hours of sunlight is 5.5 hrs, the solar wattage needed is:
13.4 kWh required / 5.5hrs of insolation x 1.25 = 3.045 kW or 3045 Watts daily.
This indicates that our home solar power system must have the minimum capacity to produce 3045 Watts of power.
3 – How Much Will This Power Cost You?:
Now you you need to calculate how much these solar panels will cost you. At the moment $4.85 per Watt is the highest average cost in the United States.
- In our example: It will cost us at the most 3045 x 4.85 = $14,768 to install solar panels to halve our power bill. And that’s before wiring, charge controllers, batteries, inverters, and electrician costs.
4 – Take Government Rebates and Credits Into Account:
Before thinking that your solar power investment is going to be $14,768 to only halve your power bill, you need to subtract any tax rebates and subsidies on offer.
2009’s Federal renewable energy tax credits came into effect from the beginning of the year, and coupled with the state-side incentives in places like Connecticut, California, New York and New Jersey, the cost of the solar power system will be much less.
- Using the same example: For a Californian to buy the solar panels, they would receive a state tax rebate of 20% of the cost, and a federal tax subsidy of 40% of the remainder. So, the investment in the solar panels would only be:
$14,768 – $14,768 x (20%) – $14,768 x (1 – 20%) x 40% = $7,089.
Since there are many factors that go into calculating your solar panel watt costs, please only use our steps as a rough estimate. Some things were impossible for us to take into account, such as special offers by solar installation companies, where they offer you discounts on the full installation (including charge controller, inverter, battery, grid-tie electrician costs, etc).
However, from the example, you can see that for Californian to reduce their power bill by half, they would have to buy $14,768 worth of solar panels, costing them $7089 after rebates. A cheaper option would be to learn to source affordable and even free solar cells, and build your own solar panels. This can be done by following a relatively inexpensive step-by-step solar power manual, such as Earth4Energy.
Tags: alternative energy, environment, hobby, home improvement, lighting, men, Money Saving Tips, renewable energy, society, Solar Energy, solar panel watt, solar power, technology, wind power
