According to the Clean Energy Council Guidelines, A 5kW solar system in Sydney will output around 20 kWh a day (averaged out across the year), outputting more on the long summer days, and less in winter. It is important to understand that this 20 kWh of solar power will be produced during daylight hours, and typically as a bell curve as illustrated below. Depending on how much power you use during the day, typically you would want to have a quarterly power bill of around $600 to $1000 (up to around 30 kWh a day excluding any off-peak hot water) to make good use of a 5kW system. These numbers will vary if you are planning on installing battery storage, as it is now possible to store excess solar power to be used in the evening, allowing households to run almost entirely off solar power. Please contact us for more information about this and how to accurately size up a battery ready solar system.

A solar system will peak when the sun is shining directly onto the panels, so for an array facing north, this will be for approximately 4 hours during the middle of the day. This system is installed on a roof facing north-west. This is a common orientation to face a solar array in Sydney, especially if you have time-of-use billing where power is most expensive between 2 pm and 8 pm. You can see in the graph how even in autumn the system will continue operating until 7 pm if you have the panels installed to catch the late afternoon sun.

The other important point to take away from this image is that a 5kW system will almost never reach its peak output. This system reached a maximum output of 3.84 kW and yet produced 29.1 kWh of power across the day. For a 5kW system to output 5kW at any one time, it has to be the right time of the day and the right time of the year, which is very rare. In this example, the system is installed on a tile roof with a normal pitch of about 20 degrees. There are 19 panels all facing north-west. This helps extend the output into the late afternoon, as seen in the graph above. In Sydney during summer, panels that are installed flat will be working at their peak efficiency because the sun is so high in the sky.

For these panels installed at 20 degrees, the output will be higher than average in spring and autumn and slightly lower than average in summer and winter. The peak output on this system during a sunny March day is only 3.84 kW, however, even in March, this 5kW system will typically produce around 30 kWh a day, much higher than the Clean Energy Council guideline of 19.5 kWh.

Solaray is the largest and most experienced installer of Enphase Systems in NSW, and our expertise ensures your system is installed in a manner that optimises output and system performance. The performance of our Enphase portfolio is on average 110% of expected output, including systems that are installed on shaded roofs. This real-world performance is why thousands of households in NSW choose Solaray Energy for their solar installation.

Do you want this level of system monitoring? Our Enphase systems come with full system monitoring free for the life of your system. Find out more – Enphase Micro Inverter Systems

5kW Solar Systems in Sydney

Standard residential solar panels have been improving rapidly. LG Solar is now offering 370W panels, and as technology improves we are now seeing high-efficiency panels drop in price such as the LG NeON 2 355W panel.

The Trina Honey Range now has a 330W panel as standard. This means that for a 5kW Solar Installation in Sydney, Solaray systems typically include 15 to 18 panels, either in series with a top-quality inverter from SMA, or as a 5kW Micro Inverter System powered by Enphase that features panel-level output. This ensures your system will output maximum power in all weather conditions:

The main benefit of microinverters is that each panel is independent of the others, making it possible to design arrays in different orientations and at different angles. A common panel layout is to have some panels facing north, and the others west – to spread out the output of solar power across the day, making it easier to use most of the solar power as it is generated.

Having panels west is also advantageous if you are on time of use billing, where you typically pay around 50c per kWh between 2 pm and 8 pm for your power.

A Final Thought

With solar prices so low these days, we find many customers buying larger systems up to around 10kW or so, even when their quarterly power bills are less than $1000 – the average size system we are currently installing is now well over 5kW. This is also due to skyrocketing feed-in tariffs. They have increased from around 5 cents per kWh to up over 12 cents per kWh. Many Solaray customers are now getting a lot more money for solar power they aren’t using.