₦airaland Forum

Good question — and the point about fridges and fans in the reply above is the part most people get wrong, so let me build on that with a concrete example.

Take a typical 3-bedroom home running: 5 LED bulbs (10W each, 6 hrs), 2 ceiling fans (75W each, 8 hrs), a fridge (150W, 8 hrs effective), TV plus decoder (120W, 5 hrs), and phone/laptop charging (about 100W, 4 hrs).

Daily use = (5×10×6) + (2×75× + (150× + (120×5) + (100×4) = 300 + 1200 + 1200 + 600 + 400 = 3,700 Wh, roughly 3.7 kWh per day.

Now divide by your peak sun hours. Most places get around 4.5 to 5.5; use 5 to be safe: 3,700 ÷ 5 = 740W of panels. Add about 25% for system losses and cloudy days: 740 × 1.25 = roughly 925W. In practice that means three 300W panels, or two 450–550W panels.

Two things people usually miss:

1. The fridge and the fans are your biggest loads here — nearly two-thirds of the total. If you undersize the system, those are exactly what drain it first, just as Laird said.

2. Panels are only half the story. You need enough battery storage to cover that 3.7 kWh through the hours without sun, plus an inverter sized for your peak simultaneous load — a fridge's starting surge is 3 to 4 times its running watts, so size for that.

I run a small site on home renewable energy and I broke down the full numbers here if you want to check your own case: this breakdown https://inforenewableenergy.com/how-many-solar-panels-do-i-need/