i want to go off grid with solar panels but i need to know how many vots and watts i need to power my house
Very simple. Look at your bills from the past year and calculate how much power you used and see what you need to cover that usage. How are we supposed to know how much power you use? Maybe you live in a bdrm trailer or a 6000 sg ft house with 20 kids. Oh and remember a few things. There is more to ' going off the grid ' than just solar panels. When the panels work depends a lot on your climate. They kind of suck on cloudy days or if you live in the artic with 6 months of darkness.Also , you need an area for the (not so cheap) storage batteries. Learn to live by cooking with gas or wood as hydro is limited , so is heat. How do you plan on heating your home /water/ refrigerators and freezers? Off the grid means a lot of compromise. Even the amount of time you can spend on the computer asking these questions. You may be limited to no more than hr per day. Off the grid also includes removing any electronic influence. No cell phones , tv (cable/sat) internet. Grow your own food and live off the land. The amount of solar panels you would need to maintain even a current lifestyle as most of us know it would probably require at least /2 acre and the cost would take at least 5-25 yrs to recover. You really need to spend more time into looking at what the cost versus return is. Like I said before. Look at what you use and see what it takes to get that from your panels. You will be shocked. Currently the panels are very good. But they cannot produce what the average home needs per day every day, they are support systems. Much like a fire place. Now they are nice to have and are very efficient. 50 yrs ago you used to toss in 2-3' logs about 6 around into the only heat source in your home. A fireplace. And it sucked more cold air into the house than the heat it produced. History has a way of repeating itself. This stuff was out almost a decade ago, they just didn`t have batteries then
you must consider what electrical appliances you want to use, eg. do you have an electric stove? clothes dryer? air conditioner? heater? watts are watts, solar panels are used to create d.c. electricity which is stored in batteries then inverted to a.c. household electricity the d.c. batteries are usually 36 to 48 volts then this is converted to 20 volt a.c. when you figure out the watts being consumed in your household you size your batteries and inverter to these requirements. on your current electric bill you should see a charge for kwh, kilowatt hours= watts in thousands x hours. If you use 25 kwh per month your house is using 35 watts per hour x 720 hours in a month. you would then want sol.ar panels that charge at least 70 watts per hour because roughly half of the day it's dark depending on where you live December is even less of course in the northern hemisphere. Your batteries need to have capacity to hold a days worth of power, batteries are rated in amp hours, amp hours x volts = watt hours. I hope this points you in the right direction. All of this being said be sure to buy your system from a reputable dealer, someone with experience and good references. I am an electrician and have seen systems put in that are completely worthless because they were not sized properly and It sucks to see that someone paid $30k or more for something that is completely useless, it sucks even more when they ask me to help them and I say pay another $30k to up size the system to what they need. Remember you don't get anything for nothing so be prepared to spend money initially and be prepared to be live very energy conscious in your day to day life. Good luck
Complex question.... Let me try to simplify it some: Make a list of every electrical device you MUST have. Add to the list how many hours a day it is actually ON. Add to the list how many watts (listed on the label or Volts times Amps) the device uses. (If you have a measuring device, use it.) For each item, multiply volts times hours = watt-hours (this is total energy used per day). Also, add the watts column for all the devices (this is the maximum instantaneous power to be used). Your solar panels should be able to provide power for your total load, so your panel's output power should equal the maximum instantaneous power used. If you can limit how many devices are used at a time, you may be able to reduce the panel size. Look at the total watt-hours. This is the total energy. Your panels generate maximum output when they are perpendicular to the sun at noon on a clear day. They generate reduced output in the morning and afternoon. They also generate substantially reduced output on cloudy days. Also, did you want electricity at night? On cloudy days? You will need batteries.. lots of batteries. And batteries are inefficient.. figure about 50% efficiency after a few years. Basically, here is a very rough formula: Panel_watts = Load_watthours / hours_sun_daily / 60%_angle_efficiency / 50%_battery_inverter_efficiency Once you've figured out the panel's watts, watts/volts=amps. Your system can be 2V with more amps, or 48V with /4 the amps... but the watts are the same. Just the wiring is different. For the battery bank, you need to determine how much backup power you will need for nights and cloudy days. Look at the watt-hours needed at nite, multiply it by the number of days and then by 2, to allow for battery aging. Unless you only have a couple devices and an LED light or 2, it is going to be VERY expensive.
You need an expert to figure out how many watts of power you will need and how many solar panels you will need to generate the wattage necessary to run your home plus charge the batteries for night use.
