San Antonio Solar Power Information & Peak Sun Hours
Solar Green Energy Summary for San Antonio, New Mexico
Lattitude: 33.9161
Sunlight
Fixed Tilt Sunlight Hours: 6.7 hours per day
1-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 7.9 hours per day
2-Axis Tilt Sunlight Hours: 8.4 hours per day
Looking at the average peak sunlight hours in San Antonio 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 San Antonio, New Mexico.
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 San Antonio. However, still knowing that the latitude of San Antonio is 33.9 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
A tracking mount will increase the average peak sun hours for a solar power system. Think about a panel that is tracking the sun in the sky vs a panel that is fixed and not moving: you will see a higher efficiency ratio of productions. A 1-axis mount will track the sun from East to West from sunrise to sunset and move on a single axis of rotation. A 2-axis mount will track the Sun from East to West the same as a 1-axis mount would, but it will also track the angle of the sun in the sky as it slowly varies season to season. A 2-axis mount is more necessary in high latitude regions where the angle of the sun in the sky changes dramatically between each equinox.
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.
The average daily peak sunlight hours in San Antonio, New Mexico is 6.7 hours. Use this number when trying to calculate your solar needs in San Antonio. As you can see above, if you were to use a 1-Axis or 2-Axis panel then the daily average would increase to 7.9 hour and 8.4 hours, respectively.