The first is to look at the peak possible instantaneous solar power production per square foot for a particular solar panel.
How much energy does a solar panel produce per square foot.
How much energy does a solar panel produce.
Thin film panels produce the least energy per square foot.
The average sized solar panel takes up an area of 17 6 square feet and produces 265 watts under direct sunlight.
Assuming the same size monocrystalline panels have the highest energy production followed closely by polycrystalline panels.
5 hours x 290 watts an example wattage of a premium solar panel 1 450 watts hours or roughly 1 5 kilowatt hours kwh.
An array of this size can produce an average of 350 850 kwh of ac energy per month.
Thus the output for each solar panel in your array would.
Solar panels lose wattage as temperature increases and this is represented as a percentage loss per degree celsius.
For the sake of example if you are getting 5 hours of direct sunlight per day in a sunny state like california you can calculate your solar panel output this way.
Therefore it is very possible to generate enough energy to cover 100 of your needs.
But at 20 watts per square foot a system rated to produce 2 kilowatts would cover roughly 150 square feet while a 3kw system would take up about 225 square feet.
To put that into perspective a typical household uses about 897 kwh per month.
For a 300 watt solar panel with dimensions 64 inches x 39 inches 1 61 meters squared or 17 31 square feet the peak instantaneous electricity production per square foot at stc is 14 58 watts per square foot.