Number Of Solar Panels, Battery Bank & Inverter Load You Need For Your Home

If you are planning to power your house by solar then you must be wondering about number of solar panels, battery bank & inverter load you need for your home. Don’t worry! it’s not just you. These are few common questions that everyone asks if they are planning to install solar at home. Today, SolarClap will address all these question one by one and also help you out to calculate solar requirement for your home.

Before we start teaching the simplest way of calculating the size of solar installation in India, we would like you to remember this fundamental formula:

Power (in watts) = Voltage x Current

Don’t forget this formula as we are going to use it a lot!

How to calculate size of solar system in India?

Most of the solar installations in India are off-grid because our country faces frequent power cuts. Off grid solar installation has 3 key components: solar panels, battery and solar PCU (solar PCU is a solar inverter with built-in solar charge controller). To calculate size of solar system, just follow these 5 simple steps:

• Step 1: Calculate your total load that you want to run
• Step 2: Size your solar inverter based on electrical load
• Step 3: Calculate the total current of your load
• Step 4: Decide how many hours of battery backup you need
• Step 5: Calculate size of solar panels based on battery size and current of electrical load

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Calculate your total load that you want to run

You should know how much power (in watts) your electrical appliances consume. For example, a tube light consumes 40watts, fan consumes 80 watts etc. Add the electrical load (in watts) that you wish to use.

Let’s assume that you added everything and the figure that you get is 1000 watts.

Size your solar inverter based on electrical load

Once you know the total electrical load, the next thing that you have to do is find a solar inverter that can power the load. If your total electrical load is 1000 watts then you should choose an inverter of 1600 watts. It is advisable to oversize the inverter because unfortunately DC to AC conversion that solar inverters do causes loss of energy. It is also good to know that a 1600 watts inverter comes in 24 volts. Remember this because we are going to use this fact ahead in our calculations.

Calculate the total current of your load

This step is easy! Go back to the formula we taught you in the beginning.

Power (in watts) = Voltage x Current

In our example, the power is 1000 and we already know the voltage to be 24v. Let’s insert these figures into our formula.

1000 = 24V x current

current = 1000/24

current = 41.66 amps

Let’s round it off to 41 amps. Now our solar system needs to generate at least 41 amps of current to power the connected electrical load. Keeping this figure in mind let’s go to our next step.

Decide how many hours of battery backup you need

The next step in calculating size of solar system in India is to think how many hours of backup you need. Remember, solar PCU/inverter will directly power your electrical load through solar. However, when solar is not available, the solar energy stored in batteries can be used to power load. Let’s say you need backup of 5 hours. Now there is a very simple formula to calculate size of battery based on your total load and backup time required.

Total load (in watts) x hours of backup needed / 24

Why should we divide by 24? Because our inverter is 24v.

Let’s put the figures from our example in this formula:

1000 x 5 hours / 24 = 208

Let’s round it off to 300Ah because it is OK to have extra backup!

You can install 2 batteries of 150Ah.

Calculate size of solar panels based on battery size and current of electrical load

Yes, sizing of solar panels comes at the last because solar panels are either going to feed the battery or run electrical load. They need to produce enough voltage and current to charge the battery properly and to run electrical load. So how do we decide the size of solar panels?

Time to remember our fundamental formula again:

Power = voltage x current

And let’s give you another golden formula which will help us here:

Charging Current of Battery = 1/10th of its Total Ah.

This means if we have 300Ah battery then charging current of battery is 30 amps (1/10th of its total). Our solar panels need to make 30 amps of current to feed our battery bank.

But what about the electrical load? Let’s not forget about that. We already calculated that our electrical load will need 41 amps to run. We need to add this to the amps that our battery bank is going to take.

Hence, 30+41 = 71 amps.

Our solar panels should make 71 amps.

#Fact: On an average, 250 watts solar panels have a voltage of 30v.

Now, let’s put everything together in our fundamental formula:

Power = Voltage x Current

Voltage: 30 V

Current: We calculated in the last step that we need 71 amps (30 amps to feed the battery bank and 41 amps to run the electrical load directly through solar).

Power = 30 x 71

Power = 2130 watts

Let’s round it off to 2500 watts because you can’t have 2130 watts panels.

This is our answer: We need to install panels of 2500 watts to feed our battery bank and run electrical load.

You can go for 10 panels of 250 watts each.

Simple! Wasn’t it?

We hope that SolarClap helped you understand number of solar panels, battery bank & inverter load you need for your home. If you are looking forward to purchase solar products for your home then do check out this list of top 10 best solar panels in India.

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Note: Please consider this as an honest attempt from SolarClap to simplify complex ideas and calculations. We do not claim that this is 100% accurate. There are other things to consider such as power factor of inverter and other technical things. Always ask an expert to size the solar system based on unique needs for your home.

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