Big Oak Flat Solar Power Information & Peak Sun Hours

Solar Green Energy Summary for Big Oak Flat, California

Lattitude: 37.8235

Sunlight

Fixed Tilt Sunlight Hours: 5.4 hours per day

1-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 6.9 hours per day

2-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 8.5 hours per day

Peak sun hours is one of the most important criteria to examine when considering installing a solar power system. Peak sun hours are different than total sunlight hours in a day because the strength of the radiation of the sun varies throughout the day. For example, during sunrise and sunset the solar insolation from the sun is less powerful than at noon. For a moment of sunshine to be considered a peak sun hour the intensity needs to be at least 1 kilowatt per square meter. This means that a square meter of your solar panel should be receiving 1 kilowatt of energy from the sun. This number is used because it is an amount of light that allows a solar panel to produce output efficiently and not under perform due to lack of sunlight power.

Knowing the latitude of Big Oak Flat will help estimate average peak sun hours for your area. The latitude is used to accurately estimate the time of sunrise and sunset, thus giving you the total hours of daylight each day. Once you know the total hours of daylight, you can estimate the amount of peak sun hours based on a number of variables such as weather, time of year, the angle of the solar panel.

Throughout the day the sun obviously moves throughout the Big Oak Flat sky. The suns position in the sky also changes throughout the year with the seasons. A fixed solar panel does not accommodate for these changes. However, a 1-axis panel rotates and follows the sun’s path during the day. A 2-axis panel both follows the sun’s daily path as well as the seasonal differences

Peak sun hours are greatly affected by weather patterns. Cloud coverage is a huge factor in peak sun hours per day because heavy cloud coverage will diminish the power of the solar insolation. You can use historical climate data to estimate average cloud and weather coverage, but it will obviously vary slightly from year to year.

We can take the latitude of Big Oak Flat and use that number to know the amount of total sunlight hours in the region from sunlight to sunset and estimate that with a fixed solar panel, Big Oak Flat will receive 5.4 average peak sun hours per day. This number can be increased to 6.9 hours by using a 1-axis tracking mount, or 8.5 hours from a 2-axis tracking mount.


Solar Businesses in Big Oak Flat, California




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