Hello-

Does anyone know roughly how big of a photvoltaic system would be needed to power a shed (say 8'x10'), producing enough power for lighting and one power outlet (generating a enough power for good sized tools).

Even a rough estimate would be helpful - at this point I haven't even looked into exactly how many kwh would be needed, etc.

Thanks.

Let me stick my foot in my month and take a guess. A good power tool would be around 5 amps x120 =600watts and a few flouresents would be around 160 watts so you're around 800 total net watts needed. Lets say your panels are 200 watts, you'd need around 5 of them taking into account losses in the panels and inverter. You wouldn't need anywhere near this if you had a way of slowly storing the energy from the panels over time (batteries) when you weren't using the tools. Now you have to figure out the amp hours of the batteries, multiple it by the volts (12) and you could go from there. I bet you could store enough energy to get you by with 4-5 batteries for an hour worth of work. I had a race trailer that I had 2 group 31 batteries and an inverter that would run my 250 watt flouresent lights for about an hour ( if my memory is that good), the microwave would kill the batteries on one bag of popcorn.