Sizing a solar panel system to your home s electric usage can be done by taking look at your energy bills over a year.
Power per square foot on electric solar panel.
As you can see there is no exact solar panel cost per square foot.
Number of solar panels per square foot of roof space.
In order to find a range for number of solar panels we compared arizona and maine s solar panel production ratios 1 31 and 1 61 the highest and lowest in the u s.
5 hours x 290 watts an example wattage of a premium solar panel 1 450 watts hours or roughly 1 5 kilowatt hours kwh.
For a 300 watt solar panel with dimensions 64 inches x 39 inches 1 61 meters squared or 17 31 square feet the peak instantaneous electricity production per square foot at stc is 14 58 watts per square foot.
Drill down to see who s offering the best solar panel prices in your state or city.
Home the estimated electricity consumption is 700 kwh.
The average sized solar panel takes up an area of 17 6 square feet and produces 265 watts under direct sunlight.
The us census bureau determined that single family homes have an average area of 2467 square feet when dividing these values you obtain 0 35 kwh per square foot assuming 0 35 kwh for a 2 000 sq.
System cost 15 000.
System size 5 kilowatt.
Solar panel cost per watt is now only 2 50 in some states making a 6kw system only 10 500 after claiming the solar tax credit.
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.
Solar panel cost per square foot 5.
Thus the output for each solar panel in your array would.
We then took 11 000 kwh and divided it by the respective ratios and then divided that number by 250 the typical panel wattage.
How many solar panels are needed to power an average house.
But at 20 watts per square foot a system rated to produce 2 kilowatts would cover roughly 150 square feet while a 3kw system would take up about 225 square feet.
At this point you can use the calculation procedure described in the previous section.
How much energy does a solar panel produce.
System size kw square footage needed for low efficiency 16 square footage needed for medium efficiency 18 square footage needed for high efficiency 22 5 kw.