Lighting/laptops/phones take a tiny amount of energy. For example, a phone battery nowadays (e.g. iPhone 6) is about 10 watthours with say 5 hours of screen-on-

Lighting/laptops/phones take a tiny amount of energy. For example, a phone battery nowadays (e.g. iPhone 6) is about 10 watthours with say 5 hours of screen-on-time. Disregarding it's on doing background stuff all the other hours, it approximately uses just 2 watt on average. But the very first microwave (oven) I looked up on Bestbuy used 1500 watt, and if you've got something cooking for 40 minutes in there you're easily using 1 kWh, or about three months of iPhone use. > Curious, what is the need for a 5kW array? Do they typically only produce at 5-10% of peak? As for peak production, well yes-ish. The average peak solar hours in the US is about 4 per day, Europe is probably at 3, in Texas it's probably 5. That means a 5kW array will produce about 25 kWh a day, or 750 a month in Texas, saving about $85 a month / 1k a year in electricity purchase at 11.5c a kWh. So yeah, on average a panel in the US produces at roughly 15% or so of peak. (±4 peak hours per day).