How Much Energy Does the Rolling Sunlight Produce?

There are several ways to answer this:

Think of the “chain” of energy.

1) Sunlight is converted to electrical energy by the PV panels, these produce up to 2400 watts peak energy (answer 1, how much energy do the panels “make”). This could also be answered in terms of amps, in which case the answer would be they can produce a max of 38 amps at 48 volts.

• There is some energy converted/produced by the wind turbines. At peak, turbines like Sunlight’s can produce around 400 Watts in high winds, however more typically they produce around 2 to 5 amps.

2) The electrical energy from the PV panels is stored in a bank of batteries (16) configured to provide us with 830 Amp-hours at 48 Volts.

3) The inverters are the last step in the power chain. They convert the DC (direct current) electricity from the batteries and the PV panels (at 48 volts) into AC (alternating current) electricity (at 110 volts; similar to the standard home outlet) up to 12000 watts (12kW).

The average US home consumes 11,400 Watt-hours of energy per day. Since the solar panels on the sunlight produce 12,000 Watt-hours of energy per day, the Rolling Sunlight could power 1.05 average US homes.

Generally, when people ask "how much does it put out" I personally assume they are talking about the solar panels. If they know a bit about electrics, then they might be talking about the inverter output.

The Solar Panels can produce up to 2400 Watts, meaning if the sun is at its brightest directly in front of the panels and there is no shade, the panels can could theoretically generate 2400 Watts of electricity – this is known as “peak output” and is not realistic in the real world, however it does provide a way of comparing one set of panels, an “array”, to another. So, we usually describe the Rolling Sunlight’s solar panels as a 2.4 kW array. The power fluctuates throughout the day depending on position of the sun, cloud cover, shade, etc. Our array, on average, produces 12,000 Watt-hours, or 12kW-h of energy per day. This is how much energy is supplied to the batteries (assuming we are only charging the batteries and not powering other things) on an average day. This value is derived from the light intensity from the sun at a specific latitude, length of day, size of the array, etc.

Batteries

The Batteries - The Rolling Sunlight has a bunch of batteries (16) configured to provide us with 830 Amp-hours at 48 Volts. This means they have 39,840 Watt-hours of energy stored in them. If you ran the inverters at full capacity (12,000 Watts) then the batteries would only last for 4 hours, 6 kW for 8 hours, 3 kW for 16 hours, etc. If you were only supplying an 8 Watt compact fluorescent light bulb then, in theory, the Rolling Sunlight could keep it lit for 5000 hours!

• 50 Amps is what you can get out of one of the 120V AC circuits. If we used all the AC power capable on the sunlight, we would draw 100 Amps. Technically, you can draw more from the batteries but we are limited by the size of our inverters. The brochure does say something about 35 or 38 Amps produced by the solar panels. This is the peak amperage the panels are able to reach when being flooded with sunlight. Those Amps go into charging the batteries.

Is Fifty Amps Enough to Power Three Houses?

It's always tricky to do comparisons with homes because each home is different. Usually we make comparisons based on energy consumption, and not based on current amperage. Mateo used to say the Rolling Sunlight produces enough energy to power 3 energy efficient homes. I don't know what the standard is for an "energy efficient home". According to one website, the average US home consumes 11400 Watt-hours of energy per day. Since the solar panels on the sunlight produce 12,000 Watt-hours of energy per day, we could power 1.05 average US homes. According to recent numbers, an energy efficient home can consume as little as 4000 Watt-hours per day. Translation, the Rolling Sunlight could power 3 energy efficient homes.