Minimum number of panels needed?

[Lupus]

Yeah erm sticking to the bare minimum isn’t going to work.

Install as much as you possibly can and compensate for the low days which you’ll see are shockingly low.

Minimums really only apply to peak days and every other day with the slightest drop of rain or cloud cover will be a massive margin less than that.

I have a base load of about 400W-500W as well and still 14,4kWh of batteries and 6.3kWp of panels still sees me using about R500 in winter on Eskom every month.

This . I've got 4.3kw of panels installed and my lows can be under 100w,especially on days like today

 

[1am7h30n3]

Luckily mine is drawing from Eskom, as we are shed at 8am and I'm getting about 80w from the panels right now

I'm already shed! Counting on batteries! Should pull through fine, base load is fridges and routers when I'm not at home.

 

[Lupus]

I'm already shed! Counting on batteries! Should pull through fine, base load is fridges and routers when I'm not at home.

I'm shed now, but my usage with son and niece on school holidays is more though seems it's about 1.6kw generation now

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

1

Any less than that and you wouldn't have any.

 

[spiff]

Thats roughly 1.2 KWh of usable battery. So theoretically 1.2KW of panels will charge the battery in 1 hour. A 300W panel will charge it in 4 hours.

You will need to provide the actual make and model of the inverter though as its more complicated than just the pure power generation of the panels.

mine is the 3kw 24vdc 80amp version

 

[B-1]

mine is the 3kw 24vdc 80amp version

That has a fairly big MPPT the PV voltage range is 30v-130v. So ideally you need to put 2 panels in series or get a high voltage panel.