There are many articles currently available on the internet that claim to tell you how to size your home solar PV system, and while some of them give some good advice (and some terrible advice), they usually give a method of system sizing that is only appropriate for one specific type of system and Contact online >>
There are many articles currently available on the internet that claim to tell you how to size your home solar PV system, and while some of them give some good advice (and some terrible advice), they usually give a method of system sizing that is only appropriate for one specific type of system and only apply to one country or region.
This article will take you step by step through sizing your grid-tied residential solar PV system regardless of your goals for the system and regardless of which country or region you are from.
Depending on where you live, you will be faced with different rules around how you will be compensated for feeding electricity back to the grid. These rules are determined by your state, or by your utility and can have a large impact on the size of your PV system
The three most common scenarios are net metering, a feed-in tariff, or no compensation.
Whichever of these applies to you, will completely change how you approach your system sizing. Generally with net metering you should aim to match your annual electricity usage, as you often don''t get paid for overproducing. With a very high feed-in tariff you will usually try to install the largest system you can afford. And with a very low, or no feed-in tariff, you need to size your system so you use as much of the electricity your system produces as you can, and try not to export too much to the grid.
To determine which system is applicable in your area searching online is a good start. If you can''t find the information you are looking for, you should contact your local utility directly.
If net metering is not available in your area, click here to skip to the next section.
If you are living in an area where net metering is offered, then sizing your system is relatively straight forward. You will generally want your system to produce the same amount of electricity as you consume in one year, as this will maximize your return on your investment.
If at the end of the year, you have produced more electricity than you have used, most net metering schemes will not allow these credits to roll into the next year. Therefore you are not getting paid for some of the electricity that you have produced, and you usually would have been better off saving money by installing a smaller solar PV system.
On the other hand, it may make sense to oversize your system if you are planning to increase the electricity usage in your home in the future. For example switching to an electric car, switching from gas to electric cooking and heating, or if a member of the household is likely to be spending more time at home, for example a stay-at-home mom or someone retiring. Depending on how far into the future you are planning to make these changes, it could also be worth considering building a smaller system now with the flexibility to increase the system size later.
Be careful when oversizing your system, as some utilities may deny your application to connect if your system appears to be larger than necessary given your past usage history. You always need to confirm that your utility will allow the system size you plan to install before purchasing components etc.
The following method will target reducing your average power bill to zero over the year. Keep in mind that this is based on averages, so individual years will vary. Also remember that solar PV systems degrade over time, so the system will produce a smaller percentage of your total power consumption in later years.
If you would rather use an online calculator to do this calculation for you, you can consider skipping to the online calculator’s section below. However, it is still useful to understand the following information and it may help you to properly use those calculators.
1. Determine your average electricity usage per day in kWh
Sengupta, M., Y. Xie, A. Lopez, A. Habte, G. Maclaurin, and J. Shelby. 2018. “The National Solar Radiation Data Base (NSRDB).” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 89 (June): 51-60. Also available at https://
The term "Peak Sun Hours" is somewhat misleading, as some areas will actually receive more than 1kW/m² during the sunniest parts of the day. It is a useful number to use however, because the nameplate ratings of solar panels are given based on 1kW/m².
Using this method will give you a good idea of the PV system size that is going to be appropriate for your household. It can be used in a first assessment to see whether installing a PV system makes sense for you, and to calculate initial cost assumptions.
However, it is also recommended to use one of the tools listed in the Online Solar Sizing Calculators below, before you decide on a final number and start spending money. This will enable you to further refine the estimate to include the specific conditions of your roof and location.
An additional benefit of many of the tools is that they can help you to determine the financial benefit you will get from the system, such as the payback period.
If you have already determined that you are on net metering, and have gone through the steps in the section above, click here to skip to the next section.
If you live in an area where a feed-in tariff system is used instead of net metering, then your system sizing can become a bit more complicated. Essentially you would need to calculate your payback period, or Internal Rate of Return (IRR) to come to an optimal system size. Luckily, there are online calculators available that can help to simplify this process.
If you have a high feed-in tariff, simply building as much as you can afford, or as much as your roof can fit, can be the best solution. This is becoming less common however as governments reduce feed-in tariffs as solar has become cheaper. You also need to consider whether the tariff will be reduced in the future.
If you are on a fairly low feed-in tariff (or none at all), for example in Australia where feed-in tariffs are as low as 6-10¢/kWh compared to retail electricity prices which can be over 30¢/kWh, it may not be worth exporting energy to the grid.
If you are not getting paid enough for that electricity you are exporting, it doesn''t make sense to pay for a large expensive PV system where most of the electricity will be exported without any benefit to you.
Instead, you should try to match the expected electricity generation of your system, with your household electricity usage, even as they both vary on a daily and seasonal basis. You will always have some export to the grid because the two won''t perfectly match, but the goal is to find the system size where the cost of increasing the size of the system begins to outweigh the additional benefit.
There are rules of thumb you can use to simplify the calculation for typical residential systems and attempt to work it out by hand, however this level of analysis is outside the scope of this article. For the vast majority of people, we instead recommend the use of one of the many online calculators which can do this for you. These calculators can help you to compare financial metrics such as payback period, or Internal Rate of Return (IRR) for different systems, in order to find the best one for your situation.
As already discussed, the internet is full of different solar calculators to help you size your solar system, and calculate your payback period and other financial metrics.
Keep in mind that many of these tools will assume you are paying someone to install your system and will make assumptions on these costs in the calculations. If you are planning to do some or all of the installation yourself you should make sure to estimate your system cost appropriately and enter this value if the calculator allows it.
Here are a number of free calculators for different regions to get you started. If you don''t see a tool for your location or situation, then be sure to check online. There are a huge number of solar calculators out there and you should be able to find one suitable for your region.
Now that you have determined the overall size of the system you need, you can start to size the individual components of your system.
The first item you should look at is the solar panels themselves. If you have already read our article on solar panel selection for grid-tied systems then you should already have a good idea of which type of panel you would like to use.
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