To put that in.
How much energy to make a solar panel.
It takes energy.
From the example of a standard residential polycrystalline solar panel we used above we know that if one 275 watt solar panel is 18 85 square feet then 1 kw 1000 watt of panels will require 3 63 of such solar panels and so will take up 68 42 square feet.
Kwh a measure of electrical energy that is equal to the consumption of 1000 watts for 1 hour.
And it takes energy to make them.
The actual output you see depends on factors like shading orientation and sun hours.
Solar panels will never generate enough power to offset the energy that was used to manufacture them in the first place.
Recently a customer of ours raised the concern that he had heard.
Solar panels usually produce between 250 and 400 watts of power.
The electrical energy that is generated by a solar panel or a solar system can be expressed as watts or kilowatts.
The panel will generate at least 30 times that or 6 mwh.
Your mileage may vary.
At 10 cents per kwh a 100 w solar panel takes 20 in energy to make and generates 600 of electricity.
A common size solar panel array is usually around 5kw and takes up around 400 square feet of space.
An array of this size can produce an average of 350 850 kwh of ac energy per month.
Not just the panels that make solar energy but the turbines and power stations and gas pipelines and railroads and railcars that make dirty energy they all take energy to make.
That all these 50 ton coal trucks these railroads these coal hauling railroad cars these coal power stations these turbines that turn coal into electricity are all somehow built by fairies.
100w 6 hours per day 365 days over 200 kwh of energy was needed to make that panel.
That energy that went into making the panels is called embodied energy.