How many solar panels would we need for an average 4 bed detached house with usual applicances.?

Question

We have usual washing machine, diswasher, 2 TV's, 2 laptops, PS2, etc. We use gas for water & heat.

Also how many panels to cook & heat electrically?

Answer 1

You have absolutely no prospect of putting up enough solar panels to power your house.

The first problem is that electricity is hard to store - and your panel will only generate power in daylight and assuming its sunny. So powering the TV at night is out.

The second is that your typical appliances use more power than it is realistic to generate and store. So you will have to generate power all day, and sell it back to the grid. Then you will have to use generated power as you need it - which of course causes emissions.

Between 4% and 22% of the energy falling on the panel is turned to power. In Sydney (lovely and sunny) you will get at best 0.42kWh per m2 of solar panel every day. In the UK you will get much less. You can work out from your last electric bill how many sq m you will need.

However, an average family home uses between 4000 and 6000 kWh per year or 11 to 16.5 kWh per day. In Sydney you would thus need around 40 sq m of panels on your house, costing around $20,000.

Answer 2

AFAIK, using solar power generated electricity for heating purposes is a big drain of electricity.

For example.. say you were using solar power to generate electricity at a cabin off-the-grid. A computer, a small tv ect could be run with one good solar panel and battery storage. However that battery storage reserve would rapidly run out if using it to run an electric heater.

Answer 3

If you're gonna be running air conditioning about 4kW peak. That works out to 20 panels and about $25,000 to $30,000 for setup. The panels are $5000 per kW plus the inverter.

Answer 4

You would have to rent the roofs off the rest of the street, hope that the sun shone all day and go to bed early because your tv, etc would be off, then live to about 236 years old before you broke even. An alternative way to go green would be to grow your own sprouts, eat them and fart through a wind turbine.

Answer 5

typical 4br homes can peak at 6kw
4kw worth of panels plus reserve(batteries) would give 24 hr
power (assuming ac is included).
you need to log power consumtion with a demand meter,
and average the kw/hr. usage.

Answer 6

take your power bill and look at the kWh and figure how many watts you use then buy about 50% more pannels than you need. then you get to decide if you want to sell your extra energy back to the power company or if you want to store it in batteries, either way, it costs somewhere between $5000 and $20000 (bateries, inverters, pannels, wiring, planing, converting everything from regular AC power)