Home » Solar Turbine » Idaho » Bonners Ferry

Looking at the average peak sunlight hours in Bonners Ferry 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 Bonners Ferry, Idaho.

The equator has a latitude of zero while Bonners Ferry has a latitude of 48.7. Any city located on the equator will receive the most sunlight throughout the year because the sunlight arrives at a perpendicular 90 degree angle to the earth at the equator. The further you are from the equator the more your daily sunlight hours can vary.

Throughout the day the sun obviously moves throughout the Bonners Ferry 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.

In Bonners Ferry you can look at the average peak sun hours of a fixed solar panel mount, which will be 4.8 hours. This number iis an estimate based on data of previous years. With a tracking mount in Bonners Ferry you could theoretically increase the amount of peak sun hours per with a 1-axis mount, and get 6.2 hours, or a 2-axis mount and potentially increase your average to 6.9 hours.