System Energy Audit and Sizing Spread Sheet 2021-01-29

A great way to get started building !!!
thanks

Didn't see it, but given the staggering number of times it comes up, recommend inverter idle power consumption be added to the sheet as the FIRST item.

Pretty good spreadsheet! I would only add one other item to calculate - inverter standby consumption.

My 24v Growatt whittles my little 100ah battery down pretty good throughout the day.

Great work. One thing I'm not seeing is a line or a note about inverter idle or losses. On smaller systems this can end up being the single largest energy user. Thank you.

This is great. Was gonna do my own after seeing others available online but thus is impressive enough to actually use it and not reinvent another whee!

As usual, FilterGuy does not disappoint, this is a great calculator! Thanks !

Excellent, easy-to-use system calculator ala Excel. Thank you ?

I have a question, the sheet is multipling the watts by the hours of usage to calculate everything, how ever when I use my kill a watt on my devices I get a totaly different story, for example the desktop computer is using 100 wats so if I use it for one hour the sheet calculates 100 wh but my kill a watt is saying that the computer is using 0.075 kwh so in one hour is using only 75 wh, the fan is actually using 0.04 kwh while is a 60 w am I doing something wrong? Maybe the wattage is the maximum usage in extreme conditions?

I noticed an issue with the spreadsheet that I wanted to bring to attention.

First, Cell P33 is supposed to add all of the DC Watt hours together (SUM(P6:32)) but instead refers only to P8:32 witch misses the first two cells in that column. Minor change but it can have a big difference if your first two items that you are trying to do an audit on are DC loads.

Secondly, I have a question regarding the logic behind the "Required Total daily Solar output (Sunny)" calculation in the Solar Array Sizing section. The formula adds both the batteries "Daily Storage Requirement" and the" min Battery capacity W-Hrs" together? Isn't this like doubling the capacity needed to recharge the battery? Also, the formula then multiplies the answer by the Max discharge from full CHARGE. I don't believe this would be needed to be done if you just started with min Battery capacity W-Hrs in the fist place.

Example: If the spreadsheet says that my Daily Storage Requirement is 1897 Watt Hours Per Day and I set a 85% Max discharge from full CHARGE, the min Battery capacity W-Hrs shows as 2231.2 W-hrs. My solar panel array only needs to put 1897 Watts back into the battery to fill it. I suppose a theoretical 2231.2 Watts to be on the safe side. Why would the spreadsheet need to add both values together and base the Required Total daily Solar output (Sunny) off of this?

I understand if someone tells me that it is doubling the capacity to factor in being under load but for a lot of people, they use their lights and other loads after the sun goes down. At least that is when I use my lights. If I wanted to be certain I have the capacity, that is when I would change the number of days of storage capacity in the spreadsheet, not the amount of PV Panels needed. I can run some lights off of the PV panels without the battery but I can't run my inverter and heavy loads off of them. That's why you need to make sure you have the battery capacity first and then compute the amount of PV panels needed to put the entire capacity back into the batteries in the number of days that you are looking for. Am I wrong?

noob says "thank you" - gotta start somewhere!

Very nice and useful spreadsheet

This has been so tremendously helpful for planning my system, thank you! Curious about why "# of days to recharge while under load" is a user input. How am I determining the answer to this question? Shouldn't this spreadsheet be able to tell me that?

Very thorough, incredibly detailed, and you spent a lot of time. Might be easier to just plug in information from Electric Bill?

very helpful

Firstly, this spreadsheet is gold, thank you so much for this resource.

Secondly, I'm a bit confused. Shouldn't the "Required Total daily Solar output (Sunny)" - cell L19 calculation which looks at the "# sunny days to recharge (from ZERO) while under load" - cell L18 (as you mention in your definitions, it is the number of sunny days required to recharge the battery from ZERO (or in this case assuming from max discharge) while you are still using power) be referencing the "Battery capacity" - L14 x "max. discharge" - L11 as well as the "Daily Storage Requirement" - cell L10)? You are only considering daily requirements and not replenishing the entire battery in your current formula.
You have: L19 = L10+ L10/L18
Should it not be: L19 = L10+ (L14*L11)/L18

If I'm wrong I may need an explanation why you are not referencing the battery's capacity in a. calculation to full recharge, where a recharge is directly dependent on how much of the battery has been depleted on not only on your daily usage.

Cheers.

Awesome..Thank you very helpful.

Brilliant, thank you!

Thanks for making this available, great resource.