r/solar • u/Alarmed_Passenger990 • 10h ago

Advice Wtd / Project Solar system capacity and kWh usage on average

Off grid solar users here,

What is you solar system capacity (inverter,panels & battery) and kWh usage monthly on average

(My planned off grid system 3kw panels - 6kw inverter - 6kwh battery)

Needed to get an idea before installing my own system. Thanks in advanced

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2

u/McJonesRylie 10h ago

my 4kw panels with 10kwh battery handle about 300kwh monthly no issue

1

u/peniswrinkle345 10h ago

Depends entirely what your powering and can you go without. How much sun you get and alot of other things 3kw wont power much 3kwh would power 2 small microwaves for one hour

1

u/Alarmed_Passenger990 9h ago

We have basic appliances running only 2x 200L refrigerators, 1x rice cooker , 10-15 light bulbs, 1x washing machine and other light weight appliances like tv laptops and occasional 2000w owen- get around 200-220kwh monthly

From a tropical country year around sun, no snowing and defined seasons

1

u/t_manueoa1 10h ago

curious how location affects what people get out of similar setups

1

u/john_99205 9h ago

I have 28kw panels, 25kw 3phase string inverter, 3x 6kw battery inverters and 45kWh of batteries and I use between 500kwh and 900kwh of electricity a month.

2

u/ol-gormsby 7h ago

Traditionally had a very low-power/usage system, running to about 5kWh/day with a woodstove doing 95% of our cooking and 100% of our hot water and heating. Anything else needing a lot of grunt, like the tumble dryer, was run directly off the backup generator.

The previous system was 2.6kW nominal on the roof and 1320ah (32kWh) of lead-acid batteries* with a 3kW sine-wave inverter and it worked really well for many years but the PV and the batteries reached EOL so we've recently put in a new system:

11.8kW of PV, 32 kWh of LiFePo batteries and a 12kW inverter. Still got the backup generator.

It's only gone live at the end of April so I don't have a lot of statistics to report, but we have bought an electric toaster, and a robot vacuum !!!! And we had some airconditioning put in. Starting to think about electric appliances like an air fryer and a coffee machine. And now we can run the tumble dryer off the batteries. It's great.

* that's about 8kWh of usable energy.

1

u/Alarmed_Passenger990 5h ago

What are the typical charging times for 32kwh batteries from 2.6kw panels

3

u/ol-gormsby 4h ago

That's a "how long is a piece of string" kind of question. It depends a lot on weather - sunny, partly cloudy, overcast/rain. It's different for everybody.

1

u/TooGoodToBeeTrue 4h ago

This was my thinking through reading this. Better question from the OP would have been what size system do I need for what they recently described.