| 4 Steps To Calculating Your Home's Solar Power Needs And Expenses |
| Written by Tim McDonald | |
| Sunday, 26 April 2009 | |
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With our current economic melt down and energy prices fluctuating daily, many of us are thinking of installing solar panel power to contribute to our homes' energy needs, and reduce our power bills.
With our current economic melt down and energy prices fluctuating daily, many of us are thinking of installing solar panel power to contribute to our homes' energy needs, and reduce our power bills. But how much solar panel watt power do we need to say halve our power bills? And how much will that power cost us to install? Here is a four step process that you can follow to answer these two vital questions: 1 - What Is Your Daily Power Consumption?: Your first step is to work out the average daily kilowatt hours (kWh) used. This can be done by looking back at your last twelve months power bills, and see how much power used per month, and get the monthly average. This will give you a better estimate of your average power needs by eliminating the effect of the seasons. It is calculated by adding up all 12 bills and dividing the total power used by 12. If you do not have the the past year's bills, then look at your most recent one. Now take your average monthly usage and divide it by 30 to work out your average daily power consumption - Here is an example: Lets say the power used last month was 800 kWh. Your average daily usage would be 800/30 = 26.7 kWh per day. - So to reduce your electricity bill to half, 26.7/2 = 13.4 kWh of solar power per day is needed. 2 - Calculate Total Solar Panel Watt Needs: Before you can work this out, you need to find out how many usable hours of sunlight your region gets per day. A simple way to find that out is to have a look at an insolation map - there is one available on our website, where the original article was posted. Once you know your daily sunlight hours, go back to your daily kilowatt hours needed and divide it by the daily sunlight hours, then multiply it by a factor of 1.25 (takes into account energy losses from the solar panel watt wiring, battery , and inverter) - Continuing from our example: Our solar panel watt needs equal: 13.4 kWh / 5.5hrs x 1.25 = 3.045 kW or 3045 Watts per day. This tells us that our solar panels must be capable of producing at least 3045 Watts of electricity. 3 - The Cost Of The Panels: Now you you need to calculate how much these solar panels will cost you. At the moment $4.85 per Watt is the highest average cost in the United States. - Following on from our example, the solar panels will cost 3045 x 4.85 = $14,768 to only halve our monthly power costs. This excludes the cost of wiring, charge controllers, batteries, inverters, and installation fees. 4 - Offset Tax Credits And Rebates: Before thinking that your solar power investment is going to be $14,768 to only halve your power bill, you need to subtract any tax rebates and subsidies on offer. The new federal tax incentives and rebates recently came into affect for green energy users. What this means is you will get a considerable credit for installing solar power at home. Not to mention the additional subsidies in states like New York, California, Connecticut, and New Jersey, where the cost of your home solar power investment will be reduced further. - Continuing on from our example: If we lived in California, our state tax incentives would be about 20 % of the investment, and the federal rebates 40% of the remaining cost. So, our solar panels would only end up costing us: $14,768 - $14,768 x (20%) - $14,768 x (1 - 20%) x 40% = $7,089. Just remember that this formula is basic way for you to get an idea of what home solar power will cost you. Some things could not be factored in - such as the state or country you live in, the special offers of local solar companies and the cost of the other parts (inverters, charge controllers, batteries, installation fees). Anyway, from what you can see it would cost us around $7,089 to buy enough solar panels to halve our power bill. We, instead, either get our solar cells at cost or source them for free, and wire up our own solar panels, which obviously saved us a lot of money. The good news is, anyone can learn to find cheap solar cells and make their own solar panel watt power. The Article Author: If you are interested on learning how to make your own home solar power for under $200 and slashing your power bill by as much as 80%, then why don't you Try Earth4Energy for FREE before wasting your money on the wrong advice?! |
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