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How Much Electricity a Solar Panel Produces
Hi this is Greg Peterson creator of the video series 12 things we must know before building a solar panel.
One question people ask me is how much electricity does a homemade solar panel generate? The answer is as much as you want it too. The limiting factor on this is really the size of the panel. The bigger the panel, the more solar cells you can fit inside it. The bigger the panel however, the larger glass or plexiglass you need, the heavier it gets, and the harder it is to handle without breaking.
Let’s look at a typical DIY solar panel as an example. The number we are interested in is watts. Without getting into too much math, to calculate watts, you multiply volts times amps. For a 12volt battery system you will be building an 18volt solar panel. Most solar cells produce around 3.5amps. So, if you have an 18volt solar panel, times 3.5 amps, you get 63 watts. That’s how much power that solar panel produces continuously when exposed to full sunlight.
If you take all the sunlight from the early morning and compress it into hours of full direct sunlight, you get what are called sun hours. Most locations get a minimum of between 3 and 5 sun hours a day, some can get up to 8 in the summer. So, if we multiply 5hrs x 63 watts, we get 315 watt hours. That means that every day, that solar panel will produce enough electricity to power something that draws 315 watts for one hour. Or something that draws 1 watt for 315 hours. Or any combination where hours x watts = 315. A more realistic example would be powering a 60 watt light bulb for 5 hours. Or powering 3 energy efficient bulbs for 10 hours!
That’s quite a bit of power for one little solar panel when you think about it. When you start adding extra panels, it’s easy to see how you could start to quickly reduce the amount of electricity you buy from the power company.
So how much electricity does a homemade Solar Panel generate? You’re building it, so as much as you want!
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