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How many watts of electricity will a single 120 watt solar panel produce in 24 hours?
In other words, how long does it take a 120 watt panel to produce 120 watts of electricity?
Okay. In *one hour*, how many watts of electricity can this produce? Can someone answer this in a non-scientific fashion? I don't need the math, I just need to know how many watts it can produce in one hour of direct sunlight.
First an electrical Watt is an instaneous unit and is Voltage times Amperage (P = E * I).
So your solar pane will produce 120 watts for any of the following conditions
12V * 10A = 120W
24V * 5A = 120W
48V * 2.5A = 120
Notice that all of the above voltage and current combinations equal 120 watts.
Lets assume that your panel produces 12Volts
If you do not connect anything to the panel you will have zero current flow, and as a result you will have zero watts.
12V * 0A = 0 Watts
Now you connect a device like a radio which draws a single amp when its turned on. The radio only takes the amount of current it needs to operate.
12V * 1 A= 12W THe radio only needs to draw twelve watts of electrical power. Even though its connected to a 120W panel you are only using 12W and you have 108W of un used generatingcapacity (120 -12) available to connect other things to like lights or other devices.
So in order to use the full wattage of the panel you have to draw enough current at a given voltage to equal the panel rating. This 120W rating for your panel is most likely for a bright sunny day. A couldy day it will produce less voltage and ove couse it won't work at night
Now remember I said watts are an instaneous unit. You can measure the voltage and current with a meter at any given time, and compute the watts being consumed at the time you measured the voltage and current.
If you notice that your electric bill is using KW-Hrs (Kilowatt Hours). Kilo is a prefix that means 1000 so 1000W = 1KW.
Watt Hours or Kilowatt Hours are a cumulative reading. They provide a means to equate how much wattage has been used over a period of time. Watts times Hours = WattHours
100W used for 1 hour = 100 W-Hrs
50W used for 2 hours = 100 W-Hrs
200W used for 1/2 hour = 100 W-Hrs
Watt hours measure the average amount of energy used of a period of time. So if I turn on a 100 W light for 15minutes every hour for 4 hours I will use 100 W-hrs of energy
100W * four 15 minute intervals (15 min * 4 = 1 hr) so 100W * 1 Hr = 100 W-hrs. I used the same amount of power over a four hour period. I just used power in 15 minute intervals and used no power for periods of 45 minutes.
So to answer your question about how many watt it can produce in 1 hour the answer is 120 W-Hrs provided that you connect devices that will consume enough current at the generated voltage to equal 120Watts and that these devices consume that power for the entire hour.
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