Sustainable Power Pt 4 Solar Power
Sizing your home or business for a solar array.
The one thing about utilizing sustainable energy like solar power is to try and reduce your personal energy consumption prior to sizing the system. Whether it be better rated windows and doors, higher grade insulation, high efficiency mechanical equipment, lower wattage lighting, turning off electronics that operate in stand-by power…there are many different strategies to reducing your consumption. The less power you use the smaller the system you can install and the more money you can save overall.
First thing is to find your monthly kilo-watt hour usage for your property. Usually it is given to you right on your utility bill. For example, John used 600 kWh in April, that is 600,000 watts. Divide that by 30 days and John uses approximately 20 kWh per day. To put this in perspective, you need approximately 100 square feet of roof space for every 1 kWh of solar arrays, so for a 20kWh system you would need about 2000 square feet of roof space.
This is why it is important to reduce your energy consumption prior to sizing and installing a solar array. Even more so if you have a battery back-up system. The space required to store your batteries will come into play as well, the standard is about 1 SqFt for every 2kWh of batteries. If you wanted to store just enough energy for one day you would need 10 SqFt of space, two days would put you at 20 SqFt and so on.