Ipswich Solar Power Information & Peak Sun Hours
Solar Green Energy Summary for Ipswich, Massachusetts
Lattitude: 42.6792
Sunlight
Fixed Tilt Sunlight Hours: 4.1 hours per day
1-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 5.4 hours per day
2-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 6.2 hours per day
Looking at the average peak sunlight hours in Ipswich is a valuable number for determining your solar power setup. Peak sunlight hours are only the hours a day in which the sunlight is strong enough for the solar panels to do their job. Not every hour of sunlight was created equal. For example, solar panels do not provide much use during early sunrise and sunset, and therefore you should not look at total hours of sunlight in a day, but instead focus on peak sunlight hours. Using this number will provide a much better estimate of your needs for setting up panels in Ipswich, Massachusetts.
If you open the newspaper in the morning or watch the weather channel on the news you can get an accurate prediction of sunrise and sunset each day for Ipswich. However, still knowing that the latitude of Ipswich is 42.7 can be a helpful number for your solar panel setup and planning. The closer your latitude is to zero the closer you are to the equator. At the equator you find the most consistent total sunlight hours throughout any given day of the year. As your latitude increases you can see larger discrepancies of daily sunlight hours during the year. For example, having very long summer days and very short and dark winter days
You will notice the difference in peak sunlight hours depending on the panel type. The more flexibility the solar panel has the efficient it can be throughout the day and the year. A fixed solar panel remains in the same position at all times. A 1-axis panel follows the sun throughout the day as it moves through the sky and eventually sets. A 2-axis panel not only tracks the daily movement, but also adjusts based on the sun's changing position in the sky throughout the year as the seasons change.
Weather is one of the major culprits that will cause inconsistent total peak sun hours for any given day. The sunrise and sunset will always be predictable every day, but the weather is hard to predict and cloud coverage can greatly diminish the efficiency of a solar power system on any given day. On the bright side, a location that is known to have cloudy weather a majority of the year could have unexpectedly more sunny days, so it can go both ways.
In Ipswich the average yearly peak sun hours for a fixed tilt non-tracking solar panel mount is 4.1. This is for a fixed panel mounted at an angle that is equal to the latitude of the location for the entire year. The amount of peak sun hours increases to 5.4 hours if you are using a 1-axis panel, and to 6.2 hours if you upgrade to a 2-axis solar panel.
Helpful & Interesting
How much energy does geothermal energy produce?
Geothermal power plants come in a wide variety of sizes. The one we run in Nevada generates a maximum of about 30 Mega-Watts (MW) after you subtract off the power needed to run all the well pumps and other equipment. A MW is a unit of power and it is equal to 1000 kilowatts or 1,000,000 watts. We show the energy output of power plants in MW-hours or kilowatt-hours usually, but watt-hours is also ok. To figure out how many watt-hr per day the plant makes, you would multiply the MW capacity x 24 hours in one day. Then you change it to watts by multiplying by 1,000,000. So for our plant in Nevada, the energy output is about 720 MW-hours or 720,000,000 watt-hours.