The amount of energy your home uses over a certain timeframe say a month is measured in kilowatt hours kwh.
Average kwh per square foot solar panel.
A typical american home will need 14 36 solar panels to cover their power bill and at least 227 square feet of rooftop space to accommodate the solar panels.
Sizing a solar panel system to your home s electric usage can be done by taking look at your energy bills over a year.
You can use the table of solar power production per kw for each state above to do the same math for your state.
Said differently the average american household consumes just under 11 000 kwh per year.
So if you have solar panels that each produce 1 kwh of power per day you would need a full 37 solar panels to fully power your home.
The cost of solar panels to power your house are 4 to 10 per square foot.
Ft so most homeowners will have more than enough room for solar panels.
And the average solar power system needed is a 5 kilowatt system.
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.
Given 1kw of panels produces 1642 kwh per year in ca and 1kw of panels takes up 68 42 square feet solar panels installed in california on average produce 23 99 kwh kilowatt hours per square foot per year.
Below are cost estimates based on home size.
5 hours x 290 watts an example wattage of a premium solar panel 1 450 watts hours or roughly 1 5 kilowatt hours kwh.
However keep in mind that there are many factors at play here so this is really only a rough estimate.
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.
The national average cost of a solar panel is around 2 98 watt.
The average sized solar panel takes up an area of 17 6 square feet and produces 265 watts under direct sunlight.
However most installers estimate solar costs by the amount of energy needed at 2 53 to 3 15 per watt before any tax credits or incentives.
This size of solar panel layout will only take about 350 400 sq.
How many solar panels are needed to power an average house.
That translates to just over 15 watts per square foot.