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In this video, I'm going to show you how many batteries you need for a 5kW solar system.

If you have an offgrid cabin with a 5kW solar panel system. You need to use this website: https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ to find out the minimum amount of sunhours you have at your location. We need to plan for the worstcase scenario, which means we'll use a minimum of 3 sun hours per day.

Now, onto the calculation: Your 5kW solar panel system will generate 15kWh of power on an average day in December. And yes, that needs to fully recharge your battery in a single day. So, we need a 15kWh battery to store all that power. That's roughly 3 48V server rack batteries, considering an offgrid scenario.

But here's the thing: sizing a solar system isn't as simple as matching battery size to panel capacity. It's actually the other way around. You start with a load analysis, then size the battery based on three days of autonomy, and finally size the solar panels based on the battery capacity.

To illustrate, let's walk through an example: Say our offgrid home consumes 10kWh of energy daily. Multiply that by 3 days for autonomy, and you've got a total of 30kWh of battery storage needed. That translates to about 6 server rack batteries, costing around $7,000. Then, we size the solar panel array to recharge those batteries in one day, considering our average of 3 sun hours.

So, how much power can you actually consume from that 15kWh battery while maintaining 3 days of autonomy? The answer: 5kWh of daily energy consumption. That's because the battery needs to store enough energy to last through three days of bad weather.