Solar panel for my house?

Question

Ok, I've been watching the earth day show on National Geographic. I was thinking of my house being powered by solar panels. I checked the electricity bill, and my house uses around 1000 kilowatt hour. Now, how big should my solar panel be and how much could that cost?

Answer 1

Fantastic idea you will save heaps

Try 2 panels to begin with and attach to your hot water.

Learn more about solar as you go its well worth it

Check out all shops that sell solar panels they do vary

Answer 2

BP has a savings calculator.  Size of the system would depend on your location.  Be prepared for a price shock too.

Myself, I'm waiting on the thin film products which will cost about 1/4 of BP's system.

Answer 3

There is more information needed to give you a true estimate. First where do you live?, what is the orientation of your roof?. was that the highest electric bill usage wise? Do you want to suplliment and sell excess back to the electric company or be disconnected from the grid. Dont need your address but the name of your utility company to see what inverters are acceptable to them. It varies as they have final say as to what can be connected to there system. please email me the info and I will give you a true estimate. As I sell and install solar systems.

Answer 4

Get your use down to 100-200Kw hours a month, then look at solar.

Solar is a system, not a few panels.

http://www.homepower.com/index.cfm

Answer 5

You need to give more info. You use 1,000 kw/h how often?

Per month? That's a lot of power

Per year? Not much at ALL

Per quarter? Um, pretty good. Not GREAT, but not bad either. It seems the most likely.

Okay. 1,000/90 days is about 11kw/h per day, and if you live in an average temperate location (again, I'm guessing. You need to give more info) then you'll be able to produce about 4kw/h per KW of solar panels you get. So in that case you'd need roughly a 3kw system.

I found a good case study if you want a look, based in San Francisco. This system produces the same as your total needs (assuming the 1,000kw/h is quarterly of course), even though the owners of this house use more power than that. The system cost the owners about $14,000. Over the 30 year lifespan of the system, they should save about $53,000, and it has added about $16,000 to the value of their house.

If you're normally getting your power from a coal fuelled power station, It also prevented about 4 TONS of CO2 per year being generated.

Anyway, check out the link to see the case study, and supply a few more details if this doesn't fit your situation.

Hope that helps