The projected amount of energy the home will use is 467kilowatt hours per month. The projected amount of energy that each solar panel will produce is 156kilowatt hours per year. How many solar panels does the home need to generate all its energy from sunlight?
Answers (1)
Energy is not a physical unit. It is a philosophical concept and an accounting technique used to analyze mechanical and chemical exchanges. In nuclear physics it is defined as a wavelength of light, in biology it is a synonym for metabolism, and in public utilities they say energy when they mean connectivity. Anybody who uses the word in any other context either does not know what he is talking about, or is peddling something you don't need.
When you talk about solar power, the first thing you run into is insolation, the amount of sunlight you get. That varies constantly and is reduced by clouds, dust, and shadows. Then you must consider the efficiency of the panel with the sunlight it actually gets. That is a fairly constant figure, but in practice the amount of power coming out of your charge controller may or may not be predictable. Then you need batteries, because solar power is such a fleeting thing. Then you figure backwards. 467 KWH equals about 640 watts all the time. If you plan on battery capacity for, say, three days, then you need 3 x 640 x 24 = 46 KWH. If you are using 12 volt batteries, that is 3833 amp-hours.
As you can see, solar power is not an easy engineering project. However you look at it, the question is still "Do you think that is enough?" And the answer is always "I dunno."
BTW what are you planning to do in this house that requires 640 watts all the time, 24 hours a day?