Solar Panel Power Generation Per Square Meter

To determine an stc rating solar labs test the panels under ideal conditions called peak sun or 1000 watts of sunlight per square meter of surface.

Solar panel power generation per square meter.

Each solar installer has sophisticated software that can spell out your house s exact power needs while looking at historical weather patterns roof angles and other factors to tell you how many panels you ll need and how much power your they ll be able to generate per square foot. How much energy does a solar panel produce. Solar irradiance is the power per unit area watt per square metre w m 2 received from the sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation as reported in the wavelength range of the measuring instrument. In the picture above the label shows an stc rating of 250 watts for the panel.

The standard solar panel has an input rate of around 1000 watts per square meter however therefore if your solar panel was 1 square meter in size then it would likely only solar insolation maps from the national renewable energy labs nrel. Therefore if your solar panel was 1 square meter in size then it would likely only produce around 150 200w in good sunlight. Thus the output for each solar panel in your array would. Standard test conditions is when there is a cell temperature of 77f 25c and 1 kilowatt per square meter of solar energy shining on the panel.

For instance if you have a panel that puts out 265 watts and is 65 4 by 39 inches in size the energy produced per square foot would be around 15 watts. Simply put once you know how much power each panel puts out simply divide it by the square feet of the panel. In other words a solar panel s power rating measures how much electricity an individual solar panel will produce under ideal operating conditions. While this does not sound like very much square feet do add up pretty quickly.

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. That s approximately equal to the power of the sun at noon on a sunny day at the equator. 5 hours x 290 watts an example wattage of a premium solar panel 1 450 watts hours or roughly 1 5 kilowatt hours kwh. This is typical for residential solar panels being sold in the us in 2020.

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. Kilowatt hours per square meter.