Simi Valley Solar Power Information & Peak Sun Hours
Solar Green Energy Summary for Simi Valley, California
Lattitude: 34.2663
Sunlight
Fixed Tilt Sunlight Hours: 5.9 hours per day
1-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 7.6 hours per day
2-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 8.2 hours per day
The average peak sun hours of Simi Valley 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.
Sunlight hits the earth directly at the equator. This is why the equator has a latitude of zero degrees. The latitude of Simi Valley is 34.3. Knowing the latitude of Simi Valley can help you plan for your solar panel setup, as the larger the latitude the more variance you will see throughout the year for total daily sunlight hours.
Throughout the day the sun obviously moves throughout the Simi Valley 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
The sunrise and sunset is very predictable every day, but things like cloud coverage and weather are less predictable and vary daily and annually. If a location that is usually very sunny experiences a huge increase in storms and cloud coverage in a given year than the average peak sun hours for that day or year will probably decrease. Tall objects such as trees and buildings can block out the sun during high solar insolation times, so be sure to strategically place your solar panels to get better efficiency.
Since we know the latitude of Simi Valley we can take the average amount of total sunlight hours and estimate that with a fixed solar panel there would be an average of 5.9 peak sun hours per day. 7.6 hours per day with a 1-axis tracking mount that tracks the sun from sunrise to sunset, and 8.2 hours with a 2-axis tracking mount that tracks the sun everywhere in the sky.