Solar Hours
Solar hours simply put is the amount of hours any given area has of useful sunlight. Below are some helpful solar maps provided by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. These solar hours vary from month to month throughout the seasons of the year. How these solar maps are read are taking into account the placement of a PV solar panel facing south and angled at the latitude of your location. You can click the solar diagrams below for a larger image. To view the solar hours map for every month of the year please visit The National Renewable Energy Laboratory
This maps shows the annual average solar hours.
This map shows the average solar hours at the height of summer in the U.S.
This map shows the average solar hours in the winter season.
So what does this solar hour average all mean? For most of us in the United States, it means we get about an average of 4 to 6 hours per day in the summer and about 2 to 4 hours per day in the winter of useful sunlight in which we can convert to renewable solar energy.
Does this mean then that solar energy is not yet convenient enough to power our everyday needs and demands? At first glance you would think so, however, just because you can only harness solar power for a few hours a day does not necessarily mean that your solar panel array is only useful for those hours.
It is during those hours that you not only use the renewable energy to power your life, but it is also a time to store that solar energy as well into high capacity storage batteries. Additionally, there are other sources of renewable energy such as wind power turbines that can operate in some cases all day and night.
If you are one of the very few unfortunate people that have little solar power hours and the wind does not seem to blow much in your area, you can still be tied to your municipal electrical grid or commonly known as the on-grid system where you only require use of your local electrical company's power when the other renewable energy sources are unavailable. An on-grid system will still save you huge sums of money in electrical bills.
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