In a solar system study, it is essential to understand the difference between the kW and kWh. This is our first series of articles dedicated to the solar system and in the first lesson, I’m planning to explain the basic idea around the solar panel theoretically.
If you are interested in studying the solar power system, you need to understand two things. One is Continuous power, and the other is total energy.
These are different parameters, for example, kilometers and kilometers per hour. As you know, kilometers are used to measure distance, and kilometers per hour are used to measure speed. Likewise, these two things have different units too.
So the continuous power measure in the units of Watts (W,kW, MW). This is used to measure the amount of constant power. When some panel says that this panel generates 100 watts, it generates continuous power throughout the time it is on.
So imaging a piece of equipment which I use a heater of 1kW power for one hour, this means that 1kWh energy. So this has the parameters of the time, and here you can get the point which is usually for the billing purposes in a solar panel system.
If you focus on the solar system, you may know that it doesn’t store andy energy, but it only produces it. So in solar panels, this says that how much energy it had over the period.
This is the reason that most of the solar panel ads you see only mentioned the number of kilowatts, for example, 5kW, 15kW panels, and not in kWh. For example, a 5kW panel exposed to direct sun for an hour will generate 5kWh of total energy.
In the advertisement, you can also see that some say that this panel will generate X amount of kWh energy. So by that, you can calculate how much energy you can save over that period.
So as a summary, you need to understand that there are two parameters that you need to consider in the solar system: kW and kWh.
for example like this
Continuous Power output – 5kW Total energy output over the day – 30kWh
Even I explain this, for example, you need to understand that solar arrays don’t produce a constant amount of energy per cell output over the entire day. We will discuss more this in another section.