Niagara Solar Power Information & Peak Sun Hours

Solar Green Energy Summary for Niagara, North Dakota

Lattitude: 47.9983

Sunlight

Fixed Tilt Sunlight Hours: 5.3 hours per day

1-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 5.5 hours per day

2-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 6.9 hours per day

The average peak sun hours of Niagara 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.

Knowing the latitude of Niagara 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 Niagara 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

Although weather predicting technology has greatly evolved over time, it is still a rather unpredictable factor that will affect the amount of peak sun hours your solar power system will receive. Cloudy days for example will usually have lower peak sun hours that a clear sunny day. And areas that usually have more average sunny days per year will probably have higher peak sun hours that areas that are often overcast or stormy.

We can take the latitude of Niagara 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, Niagara will receive 5.3 average peak sun hours per day. This number can be increased to 5.5 hours by using a 1-axis tracking mount, or 6.9 hours from a 2-axis tracking mount.


Solar Businesses in Niagara, North Dakota




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