so five kilowatt solar power system
gives you five kilowatts of power right
well not really
so in this video we're going to look at
some of the misconceptions about how a
solar power system is sized and what
that means so to do this we're going to
look at four subjects one is what's the
difference between a kilowatt and the
kilowatt hour and this is also the
difference between power and energy
secondly how is the size of a solar
system calculated thirdly what does the
solar system produce and fourthly how do
you work out the benefit for you
so what's the difference between a
kilowatt per kilowatt hour
well the kilowatt is power so when you
turn on an appliance at home like an air
conditioner or a toaster it will use a
certain number of kilowatts at a certain
point in time kilowatt hour is how many
kilowatts is used over the course of one
hour so that's the difference between
power and energy now why is this
important well it's important because
when you buy your electricity from your
retailer you're actually buying kilowatt
hours so it's important you understand
what a kilowatt hour is versus a
kilowatt so how is the size of the solar
system calculated well if you have a
look at one of these panels each of the
panel's has a wattage rating so the one
we're showing you here is a 350 watt
panel so therefore 10 of them has a
rating of 3.5 kilowatts and 20 of them
has a rating of 7 kilowatts but that
doesn't mean they will output that
amount of power at any given point in
time because that rating is done in the
factory in a what I'll call a perfect
environment which is 25 degrees C with a
fixed amount of light it is rarely 25
degrees C and is rarely going to have
that fixed amount of light when it's up
on your roof and then we have other
things like some losses through the
cables and how far they are away from
your meter box etc etc but the reason
this number is important is because
everyone in the industry is therefore
able to use the same number at the same
starting point
so what does the solar system produce
well let's just stick with a five
kilowatt system for the moment because
it's a round number so a five kilowatt
system as I said before will rarely
output five kilowatts in some instances
it may be more than five kilowatts but
because you buy your electricity as
energy in other words in kilowatt hours
we measure the output of the solar
system in kilowatt hours which is really
important the power at any given point
is not quite so important as how many
kilowatt hours you get over the course
of a day a month a year or the system's
lifetime so a five kilowatt system using
guidance numbers from the Clean Energy
Council will produce around 20 kilowatt
hours per day on average across the year
now it's going to be more in summer it's
going to be less in winter more on a
sunny day less on a cloudy day and so
forth and on a partly cloudy day of
course the output goes up and down with
the sunshine so the five kilowatt system
will give you about 20 kilowatt hours
per day on average so how do you
calculate the benefit well if we take
that 20 kilowatt hours per day on
average across the year you multiply
that by 365 so standard five kilowatt
system should deliver around 7,200
kilowatt hours of energy over the course
of the year and it really is a simple
matter of if you use all of that at the
time it's generated which you are
unlikely to do then you would save 7,200
times the amount you're paying for power
so that's call it 20 cents per kilowatt
hour you're going to save about $1400 if
it's 30 cents it's around $2,100 if you
don't use any of it if you close up your
house and go away for a year and turn
everything off then you will export it
all to the grid and you'd multiply that
7,200 by what you get for your feed-in
tariff and if that was 10 cents you get
720 dollars now the reality is no one
uses all the solar power nor do they
export all those solar power so you will
be somewhere in the middle
and it's simply a matter of working out
on average where you're likely to be and
that's how you work out benefit it's
also how you work out sizing your solar
system the simplest way to work this out
is to get one of our team a call on one
302 two one five out six and in about
five or ten minutes they can help you
through all the details of this and help
you work out the right size solar system
for you and the benefits you'll get or
alternatively just click on the link
below and download our solar guide which
also has all this information in it
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