Kachemak City Solar Power Information & Peak Sun Hours
Solar Green Energy Summary for Kachemak City, Alaska
Lattitude: 59.6674
Sunlight
Fixed Tilt Sunlight Hours: 3.7 hours per day
1-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 4.4 hours per day
2-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 3.8 hours per day
When trying to calculate your solar power needs there are a variety of factors to consider. Panel type and location, electricity needs, number of panels needed etc. One key to figuring out the math is factoring in the average peak sunlight hours in a day. Unlike total sunlight hours, peak sunlight hours are only when the sun is strong enough to power your solar panel. Using this number can help determine your needs to power your home or business in Kachemak City, Alaska.
Although you can easily predict sunrise and sunset hours each day to the minute, looking at latitude can help with your solar planning. The closer you get to the equator the closer your latitude gets to zero. Sunlight hours on the equator are consistent throughout the entire year. Places further from the equator can have large variance in daily sunlight. For example higher latitudes can have very long summer days with lots of sunlight and very dark winters. The latitude of Kachemak City is 59.7.
Throughout the day the sun obviously moves throughout the Kachemak City 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
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.
Since we know the latitude of Kachemak City we can take the average amount of total sunlight hours and estimate that with a fixed solar panel there would be an average of 3.7 peak sun hours per day. 4.4 hours per day with a 1-axis tracking mount that tracks the sun from sunrise to sunset, and 3.8 hours with a 2-axis tracking mount that tracks the sun everywhere in the sky.