How To Size A Solar Panel Array

The insolation value at your location.

How to size a solar panel array.

Enter the distance in feet from your solar panels to your battery bank charge controller. Enter the total amps that your solar panels will produce all together. Add up your kwh usage for 12 months and divide by 12 to figure out your average monthly. Gather the kilowatt hours kwh usage from your electric bill.

Your charge controller should be rated for this. For that take the low end of the mpp range in this case 270v and divide by the vmp of the panel 39 28. A solar array is producing 1 kw and charging a battery bank of 24v. 8 9 x 1000 8900 watts.

A 2 000 square foot home in california may need 23 sixty cell panels or 18 larger seventy two cell solar panels to be energy efficient. The number of watt hours wh you plan to produce in one day. We then took 11 000 kwh and divided it by the respective ratios and then divided that number by 250 the typical panel wattage. Determine your average monthly kwh usage.

The voltage of the solar array will be v in series x but 25 is added to this since that value is for 25 c standard test conditions and actual temperatures may be colder at times solar panels are more efficient when colder giving a solar array voltage of v. You ll want to have full 12 months of usage to be able to look at peaks and. To match that energy requirement a 4 23kw system solar system is required. The final calculation for the array size in number of panels to use is below.

Our test system will use 205 watt solar panels. All we have to do is find the current through the controller by using power voltage x current. This works out to 15 sixty cell 275 285 watt solar panels or 12 seventy two cell 350 watt solar panels. Take the power produced by the solar panels and divide by the voltage of the batteries.

To estimate the size of your solar array you ll need to know. First we want to calculate the minimum number of panels we should put in a string. Click on calculate to see the size wire required in awg american wire gauge. 270v 39 28v 6 87.

N ext we take the total anticipated energy production and divide that number by the panel size in watts. The controller size is then 1000 24 41 67 amps. 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.