A Tutorial on the Development of a Smart Calculator to Determine the Installed Solar Requirements for Households and Small Businesses

One of the challenges faced in the Solar Power industry in Africa is the challenge of proper sizing of solar equipment to be installed for homes and small businesses. The installed solar systems in many homes and businesses are undersized. This has led to the underperformance of such systems. This and many other reasons have led to consumer skepticism and reluctance in installing solar power systems for their energy requirement. This paper considered the development of a Smart Calculator (SC) to determine the installed solar requirement of households and small businesses. The purpose of this developed SC is to help ascertain to a large extent the minimum solar requirement to be installed for any home or business. The calculator estimates the number and wattage of solar panels required, the quantity and rating of the batteries needed, the rating of the inverter and charge controllers to meet any energy requirement. The calculator is designed using MATLAB and results are displayed on a MATLAB GUI. The user could also print out the results of the calculator in an excel spreadsheet. The results from the calculator were also compared with Solar Installation catalogs from a Solar Installation company in Nigeria to check for similarities and deviations. It was noticed that the company mostly designed for one (1) day of autonomy, thus reducing the capacity of the installed batteries. While this solution leads to cheaper installed systems, clients need to be made aware of this concession so they use the systems properly. This calculator would assist solar system engineers and installers, home and business owners and other enthusiasts make better estimates and decisions.