Ok for this particular type of panel brand…
-DC STC WATTS 4500 WATTS
-DC PTC WATTS 4142 WATTS
-AC CEC WATTS 3956 WATTS

Sooo, I’m confused because I thought the goal was to have only enough panels to power your house for the Kwh per one day of what you want to elimate. But it seems the number of panels are for a months worth of usage.

Can someone please explain this to me? Thanks!

Capacity versus Energy

To learn how to compare technologies within a load factor category, one has to understand a number of terms and concepts, like the difference between capacity — measured in kilowatts (kW) or megawatts (MW) — and energy, measured in kilowatts-hours (kWh) or megawatt-hours (MWh). People often quote costs/kW when they are really talking about costs/kWh. Since these sound similar, they must be similar. Unfortunately, they are not.

Capacity for a power plant (kW or MW) is probably best explained with a highway analogy. A 10-lane highway is able to allow more cars to get from one point to another in a given time period when compared to a three-lane highway. Likewise, a 1,000 MW power plant has the ability to put more energy, or MWh, to the grid in a given time period than a 500 MW power plant. The size of the highway is analogous to the capacity, or MW rating, of the power plant. The number of cars that pass from one point to another on the highway during a given time period is analogous to the energy, or MWh, that the power plant delivers during the same time period.

So the more lanes on the highway, the more cars that can pass from one point to another in one hour. Therefore, the larger the power plant’s capacity, the more energy the plant can deliver to the grid in one hour.

Now that we understand the difference between capacity and energy, we can begin to compare the costs of one power plant to another.

Read the whole article here: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/10/how-to-compare-power-generation-choices?cmpid=WNL-Friday-October30-2009