Solar Power Calculator

When trying to decide on a solar power system for their homes, many people need to figure out how large a system they require. This is based on many different factors and using a solar power calculator can help you find the exact right system for your home and an approximate cost.

Power Consumption

The first piece of information you’ll need is your average power usage. This should be easy to find on the bills you receive from your local utility. This number will be shown in kilowatts and the bill should give you a kWh total for each month.

You should try to locate at least a years worth of these bills to give you a good representation of your power usage over time. Once you have these bills, average all the months and take note of any that are significantly higher.

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You will be sizing your system for the average number but it’s always good to see what your peak power consumption was and in what month it occurred. The reason for this is that many utilities will only issue you a credit for the excess power you generate that can be used that month.

If you have months that you generate a lot of extra power you may not be able to apply that to another month when you are consuming more than you are producing. This may require you to build the system a little bigger to account for these peaks.

The solar power calculator will need your average usage number, or your average monthly cost for electricity.

Insolation Factor

The next number you’ll need for the solar power calculator is your insolation factor. This is the biggest determining factor on the performance of your solar panels and is based on your location.

Basically this number is a measure of how much sunlight hits the solar panels directly each day. The reason this varies by location is due to variance of the angle of sunlight that hits the earth.

The closer you are to the equator, the more directly the sunlight will strike the solar panels and the higher your insolation number. This means that the same solar panel at the equator will generate more power than lower or higher latitudes.

There are websites that can give you this number based on your zip code so you can enter it into the solar power calculator.

Solar Panel Alignment

The other factor has to do with the alignment of your home and isn’t really needed for the solar calculator, but it needs to be considered.

For a solar power system to operate at peak efficiency it needs to have a southern exposure for the solar panels. Even though newer panels are more forgiving on this alignment, if the panels are too far off from this exposure their output can be affected.

The best way to calculate this alignment is to divide the distance from sunrise to sunset in half and point your solar panels at this spot for best performance.

Once you have all this information you are ready to use the solar power calculator. There are several websites that offer an online version of the calculator and they all require the same information. They will tell you how large a system you’ll need to use on your home to replace all your electricity with your new system.

Almost any solar power calculator will allow you to adjust the calculations for a lesser amount of power so you can see what a smaller system would cost. Some of the more sophisticated versions even give you an estimate of your carbon footprint based on your energy use.

If you are looking for a good solar power calculator to work with, there are some great online do it yourself solar power guides that come with one as well as the directions for how to use it.

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