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To illustrate, let’s go back to the Phoenix example. This means knowing how many peak sun hours your location gets is useful because it lets you easily estimate how much energy a solar power system could produce. Solar panels are usually rated at an input rating of 1,000 W/m 2 (1 kW/m 2), so during a peak sun hour you’d expect a 1 kW solar array to output 1 kWh of electricity before taking into account system losses and other environmental variables such as ambient temperature. Put another way, on an average day, the sun will pump out 5.8 kilowatt hours of sunlight per square meter. So if, say, you live in Phoenix, AZ, you can expect to receive around 5.8 peak sun hours per day on average. Then we can express this value in peak sun hours. Using historical data, we can estimate the amount of sunlight we expect a location to receive per day. So we can write it as: 1 peak sun hour = 1 hour of sunlight at 1,000 W/m 2 = 1,000 Wh/m 2Īnd because 1,000 watts is equal to 1 kilowatt, we can also write it as: 1 peak sun hour = 1 hour of sunlight at 1 kW/m 2 = 1 kWh/m 2 For those of you who know a bit about electricity, you’ll recall this is equal to 1,000 watt hours (or 1 kilowatt hour) of sunlight per square meter. Peak sun hours, also called peak sunlight hours, are a way to measure how much sunlight a location receives.Ī peak sun hour is defined as one hour in which the intensity of sunlight (solar irradiance) averages 1,000 watts per square meter. The calculator assumes you will be using a solar array with a fixed tilt and azimuth angle, rather than one with 1-axis or 2-axis solar tracking.The calculator does not take into account shading.Data source: National Renewable Energy Laboratory PVWatts Calculator.