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Health & Fitness

Blog Post: What Size Solar Electric System Do I Need?

How can I calculate the size of a solar electric system for my property?

“What size solar electric system do I need, if my house is 2,000 square feet?”  This is the question that we are asked, more than any other question. The reality is that the solar electric system size has nothing to do with the size or square footage of your home. It is strictly based on the amount of electricity that you use (kilowatt hours) each month.

In order to properly size your solar electric system, you will need copies of your electric bills. On your bill each month, there is information on how many kilowatt hours you have used. If you look closely at the months throughout the year, you will see that you use more power in the summer than in the winter since your air conditioning uses a lot of electricity to operate. If you don’t have AC, then your winter months will be higher bills, since your lights come on earlier in the evening. Either way, you will need to see a full year of your bills so you can see how much electricity you use throughout the entire year.

SCE or the DWP uses a method called “Net Metering” to figure out how to compensate you for the power that you produce. However, if your solar electric system produces more electricity than you use throughout the year, they will not pay you for that over-production, at least not fairly. So, you want to size a solar electric system to bring your bill right down as close to zero as possible but not any further. 

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You can calculate the size of a solar electric system by taking your total annual kilowatt hours used and divide that by 365 (days in a year). Divide that number by 5.5 (average daily peak production hours) and you will have the correct system size in kilowatts.

So you can see that the solar electric system size has nothing to do with the size of your house.

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