How Many Solar Panels Do I Need for A 4 Bedroom House？

Hello, some people ask us a lot questions, including like How Many Solar Panels Do I Need for a 4 Bedroom House?

My answer is always the same.
We don’t know.

The power usage for different house is very different.We cannot just give you a answer without knowing the power usage only know there are 4 bedrooms.

 House located in cool place, there are electric heaters, which need a bigger power solar panels system. 

And in hot place, there are many set air conditioners. Different family using the home appliances in different using time. And in some place only using fans, the power usage are quite different.

So we don’t know how many solar panels for a 4 bedroom house off-grid.

The best way to calculate how many solar panels you need is to look at your electric bill every month, to see how many kwh you buy in one month.

You can see that my usage drops significantly from August 2013 to August 2014, as well as from July to August in 2014. We went wait every weekend in August 2014 and turn the ac off. We're gone. 

Saving us $85 from the previous year. Unfortunately, we went away for a week that July and forgot to turn off the air conditioner. It stayed on high cooling an empty house all week. 

You can see that's the highest usage of 13 months and was completely preventable. That mistake cost me about $160.

In November, we switched the mini split from ac mode to heating mode, to delay, turning on our oil heat, bringing our electric usage back up, cost an extra hundred thirty five dollars to heat the house for the electricity that month, but saved us at least that much on our oil bill. By December, it was too cold for the heat pump to work. 

So we turned it off and turn on the oil, dropping our electric use. You see, even in the same house with the same people, behavior changes the electrical use dramatically. It's changing the answer to the original question. 

How much solar do I need to power my house? I recommend you look at your monthly usage and analyze it. What was your big energy user each month and could change the behavior, reduce it.

Once you understand your electric use, then you can start to figure out how much solar you need. 

Our average use is 1,500 kilowatt hours a month. I use that number in our angry calculator and decide to see what would take to make all of our power with sword, letting us down to zero. 

That would require around 13,000 watt or 13 kilowatt solar system for my area around 50 solar panels.

This chart shows the last 30 months of electric use and the estimated output of a 13 kilowatt solar system on my house for that time. 

With net metering, I can use any power I generate during the day and sell the extra back to the grid. Then at night, my system isn't generating any power. I can buy it back from the grid,

 fitting in the meter back and forth. Any additional power I need gets bought from the grid same as usual. Likewise, with months that I make more power than I use, in the spring, I can bank the credits to use them in the summer and winter. When I don't make as much as I use, today's average cost would be around $26,000 us to buy the equipment to install it yourself. 

What about $52,000 to have one professionally installed that varies depending on your equipment and location? A combination of federal and local incentives could cut the cost by 1/3 ~ 1/2 in the us depending on your location.

This is to pay for itself in about 8 years for me, after that, and for the next couple of decades that my system keeps humming along, the $3,000 a year, 

I was going to pay to the lecture. Company stays in my pocket, plus with rate increases that saving is bound to grow over the years.

But I think about that meeting and staying connected to the grid is I don't have to make off the power, like if I was off grid, I can instead to just decide to make half of my power or less and buy the rest from the grid, 

resulting in just a lower monthly electric bill, you can see from this graph that charts both my monthly use and my projected monthly solar generation with a 6.5 kilowatt solar system.

There for a couple of months, I actually would make all the power that I use. But on average, I would make half of the power I needed, cutting my power bill in half. This still gives me a significant monthly savings. 

Solar isn't the silver bullet for reducing my electric bills. We're also working on further reducing our power use. We recently replaced all of the shop lights in the basement with LED tubes. 

This product power use from 2,500 watts down to about 250 watts, and light quality is actually better now than with the old lights. 

We replaced all of our condition light bulbs throughout the house with LED as well. 

Also try and get smarter with the programming of the air conditioning, cutting down our biggest power user.

You can see why the most commonly ask question we get asked here. It's also the most complicated and personal question to answer. 

Grab your electric bill, go to our calculator and find the answers for your home. 

I hope this was helpful. If so, give us a like a share and check out more of our videos and subscribe to our channel and all the store. 

So we can notify you and more videos are available. Also go to our website, multi store dot com. We've been making renewable doable since 1999.

Wang has over 10 years of experience in off-grid projects. And know how to wire the system well. Making every installation step easier.