West Liberty Solar Power Information & Peak Sun Hours

Solar Green Energy Summary for West Liberty, Iowa

Lattitude: 41.5726

Sunlight

Fixed Tilt Sunlight Hours: 4.5 hours per day

1-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 6.5 hours per day

2-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 7 hours per day

The average peak sun hours of West Liberty is a crucial measurable component needed to efficiently implement a solar power system in a home or business. Put simply, peak sun hours are the hours of sunlight a day that are strong enough to be efficiently absorbed by solar panels and eventually turned into usable electricity. Not every minute of sunlight during a day is strong enough to be useful to a solar power system. Think about just minutes after the sunrises, which officially counts towards total hours of sunlight, but is usually too weak to be counted in peak sun hours because the strength of the solar insolation is not strong enough near the horizon to be absorbed and turned into electricity at an efficient rate. Times during the day like this, where the sun is out but not strong enough, are not counted as peak sun hours. In other words, the amount of peak sun hours in a location will theoretically always be less than total sunlight hours for a given day.

The latitude at the equator of the earth is zero degrees. This is where sunlight strikes the earth most directly. Due to the earth's curved shape, sunlight hits at a various angles depending on location. As latitude increases, the further you are located from the equator and more variance you see in sunlight hours. The latitude of West Liberty is 41.6.

A tracking mount will increase the average peak sun hours for a solar power system. Think about a panel that is tracking the sun in the sky vs a panel that is fixed and not moving: you will see a higher efficiency ratio of productions. A 1-axis mount will track the sun from East to West from sunrise to sunset and move on a single axis of rotation. A 2-axis mount will track the Sun from East to West the same as a 1-axis mount would, but it will also track the angle of the sun in the sky as it slowly varies season to season. A 2-axis mount is more necessary in high latitude regions where the angle of the sun in the sky changes dramatically between each equinox.

Weather is a big determinate of average peak sun hours each day. There are many aspects of weather that can increase or lessen the peak sun hours in a day in a particular location. For example cloud coverage is a crucial variable. And more importantly, what type of cloud coverage; thin scattered clouds will have less diminishing power on the solar insolation than thick rainy storm clouds. Sometimes long periods of sunny days are rare in certain locations, this would increase average peak sun hours for that time-frame

We can use previous years of data to estimate the amount of peak sun hours in West Liberty. A fixed tilt mount for example will receive 4.5 average hours per day. For more efficiency for your system in West Liberty you could use a 1-axis tracking mount and increase your daily peak sun average to 6.5 hours, or even further with a 2-axis panel to get an average of 7 hours.


Helpful & Interesting

A reaction turbine is a type of turbine that develops torque by reacting to the pressure or weight of a fluid; the operation of reaction turbines is described by Newton's third law of motion (action and reaction are equal and opposite). ... The pressure of the fluid changes as it passes through the rotor blades.


Solar Businesses in West Liberty, Iowa




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