In Pakistan many homeowners ask about how many solar panels do they need for their property? Don’t worry if you are among those people I am here to make things easy for you and I will guide you till the end so get ready to read the full article for your benefit.
We will cover every important thing from daily energy consumption to sunlight exposure. Because we will keep things simple there are only 5 crucial things you should know that will help you understand how many solar panels you need and they are written below:
- Your Home’s Electricity Usage
- Solar Panel Size
- Sunlight and Climate In Your Area
- Size of Your Home
- Budget
Your Home's Electricity Usage
Knowing your home’s electricity usage is the first step for knowing how many panels you need. Obviously if this is your first time purchasing this tech it might be possible that you don’t know how much your home electricity usage is. In Pakistan the calculation process is done by seeing how many units you have consumed for instance:
If you are last 3 months average unit consumption is 250 and it stays stable we can calculate the average daily electricity consumption and then estimate the monthly and yearly usage.
Let’s calculate it for an average month of 30 days:
Average daily consumption = 250 units / 30 days ≈ 8.33 units per day
Now, to estimate the monthly usage:
Monthly usage = Average daily consumption * Number of days in the month
For a typical month with 30 days:
Monthly usage ≈ 8.33 units/day * 30 days ≈ 250 units
So, your monthly usage seems consistent at around 250 units.
To estimate yearly usage, we can multiply the monthly usage by 12:
Yearly usage ≈ 250 units/month * 12 months ≈ 3000 units
Therefore, based on your average consumption over the last three months, your yearly electricity usage is estimated to be around 3000 units.
The tip I give to everyone is to use LED lights and energy-saving appliances by doing that you will need only few solar panels.
Solar Panel Size
A solar panel’s normal size is 65 in x 39 in or 5.4ft x 3.25ft. These sizes of panel can be different because each company available in Pakistan produces differen sizes of solar plates.
Normally the roofs of our house are not that wide to fit this tech and if it is wide enough to install 20-35 plates the roof will have shade on some places that is why size matters in this condition if the you have enough space on the roof but there is shade use medium size plates with maximum numbers you need that will help to get best efficiency.
If your roof does not have space for you to install your desired number of plates but it has no shade use big plates on it and the best thing is that you will need only few plates to fit for the maximum efficiency.
Sunlight and Climate in Your Area
Everyone knows that Pakistan is blessed with four seasons and you are very lucky to born here because you can see all these seasons every year but mostly summers are in Pakistan and specially the month from May to July the average temperature in summers are 38 °C (100 °F) and the highest it can exceed to 53 °C (127 °F).
If you are in a hot city like Karachi and Jacobabad your installed panels on the roof will get immense sunlight which means it will convert sunlight up to 22% of efficiency the disadvantages you will have of big cities is air pollution it can put dus ton your plates that can reduce the absorbing of sunlight so you might have to clean those every single day.
Budget
Set your budget after check the prices on the home page and we have written the prices of each solar panel from different companies like Longi, Canadian and Trina etc.
The starting prices of single plate are 7,000 PKR and the highest is 29,000 PKR the price depends on the quality solar panel watt and company of it. Keep in mind that you might need to set extra budget for additional components like batteries and inverters and the cost of installing those on your roof.
Bonus
Last and most important one this will help you how many plates you need for your home by using a formula which is also used by Energysage. You can use the solar calculator on their website but if you are good at the maths which many people are unfortunately are not good at I have written the formula below:
Quantity of panels = system capacity/production ratio/panel wattage.
Using the following figures, you can determine the calculation:
Quantity of panels = 11,000 kW / 1.6 / 300 W.
The amount I enter is just an exmaple you can enter the wattage depending on the one you need and after the calculation you will get the number panels for your home.
Remember to use the right calculator on the website link that I provided you can see that in the image belwo
