Constantine Solar Power Information & Peak Sun Hours

Solar Green Energy Summary for Constantine, Michigan

Lattitude: 41.8379

Sunlight

Fixed Tilt Sunlight Hours: 4.4 hours per day

1-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 5.1 hours per day

2-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 6 hours per day

The amount of hours from sunrise to sunset is equal to the total sunlight hours in a 24 hour period. Similarly, peak sun hours are the amount of total sunlight hours in a 24 hour period that are strong enough to provide power from being captured by a solar panel. Not every hour of sunlight delivers the same amount of energy resources. The sunlight at sunrise does not provide as many resources as the amount of sunlight mid-day. Thus, looking at the average peak sunlight hours for Constantine is valuable for calculating your solar needs.

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 Constantine. However, still knowing that the latitude of Constantine is 41.8 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

Depending on your output needs, to get more out of your solar panels you can either upgrade your technology, buy more panels, or buy different tracking type panels. A fixed solar panel remains fixed at one angle throughout the year. A 1-axis panel will produce more output because it follows the path of the sun from sunrise to sunset to maximize sun exposure. Even more productive is a 2-axis panel that not only follows the sun's path throughout the day, but also accounts for the more subtle sun changes throughout the year with the different seasons.

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

Since we know the latitude of Constantine we can take the average amount of total sunlight hours and estimate that with a fixed solar panel there would be an average of 4.4 peak sun hours per day. 5.1 hours per day with a 1-axis tracking mount that tracks the sun from sunrise to sunset, and 6 hours with a 2-axis tracking mount that tracks the sun everywhere in the sky.


Solar Businesses in Constantine, Michigan




Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *