How much energy does a solar panel produce?

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: 5 hours x 290 watts (an example wattage of a premium solar panel) = 1,450 watts-hours, or roughly 1.5 kilowatt-hours (kwh). Thus, the output for each solar panel in your array would produce around 500-550 kWh of energy per year.

All solar panels are rated by the amount of DC (direct current) power they produce under standard test conditions. Solar panel output is expressed in units of watts (W) and represents the panel’s theoretical power production under ideal sunlight and temperature conditions. Most home solar panels on the market today have power output ratings ranging from 250 to 400 watts, with higher power ratings generally considered preferable to lower power ratings. Pricing in solar is typically measured in dollars per watt ($/W), and the total wattage of your solar panels plays a significant part in the overall cost of your solar system.

Forget single solar panels–how much energy will your whole system produce?

Knowing how much energy a single solar panel produces is all well and good, but more importantly, how much solar power can your roof generate? Let’s do the math below:

Take our example above, where you’re getting an average of five hours of direct sunlight per day (an average amount of sunlight for most areas of California) and using solar panels rated at 290 W. Let’s say you install 30 of those premium solar panels on your roof–that nets you a 8,700 watt, or 8.7 kW solar panel system, near the average system size purchased on the EnergySage Marketplace. Multiply the five direct sunlight hours we estimated above by 8.7 kW, and we get approximately 43.5 kWh of electricity produced per day. And for one final conversion, if we multiply 43.5 by 365 days in a year, we get approximately 15,800 kWh of electricity produced in a full calendar year from a rooftop array of 30 premium, 290 W solar panels. Considering the average electricity use per year in the U.S. is around 10,600 kWh, that’s probably more than enough to power your home on solar.

This estimate is likely on the high end for most solar shoppers, and likely because of our estimate for the amount of sunlight the system will get (known as sun hours).

What can you power with a single solar panel?

In the example above, the solar panel is producing 1.5 kWh per day, which ends up being about 45 kWh per month. That’s enough energy to power some small appliances without too much issue, but if you want to cover the energy used by your property’s climate control systems or large cooking appliances, you’ll need more solar panels.