Solar Panel Contractor | Solar Panels, Battery Storage, Roofing, HVAC
To determine how many solar panels you need to run a home, you first must understand how much energy you use during the average week. You can find out by looking into the energy bills that you receive monthly and calculate the average energy usage per day. There are also other ways to determine your energy usage. For example, if you use 50 light bulbs for one hour, which are all 20 watts, this will consume 1 kilowatt-hour of energy. Expand this math to all your appliances and devices, and you will be able to calculate how much energy you use on average. After understanding the average usage per week, your contractor can help you choose the best possible solution for your home by determining the surface area of your roof and how many panels can fit on your roof. But there are a few other factors that are impossible to take into consideration, such as overcast weather and outliers in your energy usage. An average solar panel array of 400 square feet can produce anywhere from 300 to 850-kilowatt hours of energy per month. Depending on your energy usage, 400 square feet of panels may be enough, but it is best to consult your solar contractor. For example, a home in New York will generate less energy throughout the day than a home located in California because of the weather conditions and power of the sun. An array of 40 panels, on average, produces around 14,000 kWh of energy, so depending on your energy usage and location of your home, you may need to increase the number of panels. There are even a few websites that allow you to calculate the number of solar panels that may be required to be fitted to your home. All you will need is your average monthly energy usage and what percent of energy from the grid you would like to offset with solar. There are also a few other key factors to weigh, such as the surrounding trees and angle of your roof. These may seem non-essential to some, but these can put a significant dent in the amount of light consumed by your panels. Just an hour or two of shade during the brightest times of the day can put a considerable dent in the number of kilowatt-hours generated. Another is the climate you reside in. All these instances mentioned may cause you to need a broader array of panels to generate enough power for your home. One of the last things to consider is the efficiency of the solar cells inside the panels. Some panels are much more efficient than others. When determining which panels to invest in, it is best to take this into consideration. Your solar contractor will be able to calculate the average amount of energy that can be generated from your solar panel array, along with the average consumption. These estimations are never exact because of changes in your usage and differences in the weather.
HOW LONG DO SOLAR PANELS LAST? You’re interested in solar power for your home or office; now what? First things first: solar panels, like any product, do indeed degrade over time. This means there will be a reduction in energy efficiency from year-to-year. The good news is that the enhancements in solar technology over the last decade have provided a much better product. What does that mean for you, the consumer? It means the latest solar panels decline at a rate of about .5% per year. In layman’s terms, if your brand new solar panels are operating at 100% efficiency upon installation, then they will perform at 99.5% efficiency after one year of use, and 90.0% efficiency after 20 years. A vast majority of the solar power industry provides a warranty of excellent length for their product - most often between 25 and 30 years. Investing thousands of dollars will always be a reasonable cause for concern. Still, the solar power industry wants to bring its customers the greatest peace of mind possible, and they do this by backing their products. While your solar panel warranty may expire after 25 years, chances are excellent, your solar panels will still be very efficient for many years to come. SOLAR PANEL ENERGY PAYBACK TIME (EPBT) Like millions of us in the world today, energy and resource conservation has become a huge talking point. Naturally, we want our beautiful planet, with its limited resources, to last as long as possible, so many generations from now, there will still be resources aplenty. The solar power industry has come up with a measurement standard, known as Energy Payback Time, or EPBT, due to the concerns on climate change, reduction in waste product, energy consumption, and things of the ilk. What is EPBT? A concern of solar energy for many consumers is the potential for environmental damage during the manufacturing of the panels themselves. In other words, are you damaging the environment more than you’re going to help it? Absolutely not. So how long does it take to recuperate the energy spent to produce the panels by your usage of the clean, renewable, sustainable energy our closest star provides? Surprisingly, newer, high-efficiency solar panels pay back their ‘debt’ in only six months. WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF SEVERE WEATHER ON MY PANELS? After investing thousands of dollars into your solar panels, one of your most significant concerns may be the effect severe weather will have on your system. Believe it or not, the United States Government actually has a hand in industry standards that are set for solar panel durability via the Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO). Over the years, SETO has developed a series of tests that provide consumer confidence in solar energy investments. In 2017, there was a significant hailstorm in Denver, Colorado, that produced hail THREE inches in diameter at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The Denver NREL has 3,000 solar modules, and after the hailstorm, only one panel had been damaged! PEACE OF MIND Rest easy, you have peace of mind. Your panels will survive severe weather, you are helping the environment by using renewable energy, and you have a warranty that may outlast the mortgage on your home. Solar power is the way of the future. Jump on board!
