Solar panels come in a whole bunch of sizes or you might say they come in different wattages or watts.  One really common size/wattage is a 200 watt solar panel.  The physical size for one of these panels is roughly 5  feet long by 3 feet wide, and usually about 3 inches thick.  So, think of one of these panels being about 15 square feet.

What does a 1kw (1000 watt) system take up in square feet?  Well, that’s roughly 5 solar panels that are 200 watts each.  So, the math would be 5 x 15 square feet or about 75 square feet total for a 1kw solar system.

The Energy Production of one 200 watt solar panel:

This again will depend on the sunlight hours of the location that you are going to place the solar panels.  If for example you have 5 sunlight hours per day per year in your location, you could expect each panel to produce about 1 kilo watt hour per day in direct current.  And of course if you had 5 panels, that would equal about 5kwh/day in direct current.  There is going to be a slight energy loss when the energy is converted into alternating current(AC) so after that factor, you would have about 85% of what you started with give or take a little either way.

Here are some pictures of what these solar panels might look like.  They are examples of 200 watt panels:

GE 200 Watt

Sanyo 200 watt