Honokahua Solar Power Information & Peak Sun Hours
Solar Green Energy Summary for Honokahua, Hawaii
Lattitude: 20.9984
Sunlight
Fixed Tilt Sunlight Hours: 5.7 hours per day
1-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 7.8 hours per day
2-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 8.3 hours per day
Looking at the average peak sunlight hours in Honokahua is a valuable number for determining your solar power setup. Peak sunlight hours are only the hours a day in which the sunlight is strong enough for the solar panels to do their job. Not every hour of sunlight was created equal. For example, solar panels do not provide much use during early sunrise and sunset, and therefore you should not look at total hours of sunlight in a day, but instead focus on peak sunlight hours. Using this number will provide a much better estimate of your needs for setting up panels in Honokahua, Hawaii.
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 Honokahua. However, still knowing that the latitude of Honokahua is 21.0 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
There are a few ways to increase average peak sun hours per year for your solar power system. One way is to use a tracking mount solar panel instead of a fixed tilt solar panel. A 1-axis mount will track the sun throughout the sky from sunrise to sunset, giving your panel a more efficient facing direction towards the sun throughout the day. A 2-axis solar panel will track the sun in the sky throughout the day, but also change and follow the angle of the sun in the sky throughout the year. Both of these axis system solar panels will produce higher average peak sun hours than a fixed solar panel.
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
For Honokahua the number of average daily peak sunlight hours for a fixed solar panel is 5.7 hours. If you are using a more efficient 1 or 2-axis panel then the number will increase to 7.8 hours for a 1-axis panel and 8.3 hours for a 2-axis panel.