The amount of available sunlight and water has a significant impact on the development of systems to harvest them. Understanding how the availability of sunlight and water changes throughout the years offers insight into what kind of harvesting systems need to be built.

For example: The amount of solar energy per square meter has implications for the output of solar panels that should be used for an array. For example, in December the available solar energy exposed over a square meter of solar panel is 1 kWh. A solar panel that is 20% efficient at converting that exposure to electricity might only produce 300 watts if the panel is 1.5 square meters in size. It might not be worth spending extra money on 400+ watt panels if they won’t be useful in winter.

Quick Stats

Shortest and Longest Day Of The Year

  Day of Year Sunrise Sunset Hours of Daylight
Shortest 2022-12-21 07:55:01 16:31:33 8.609
Longest 2022-06-21 05:23:13 21:10:44 15.792

Shortest and Longest Solar Energy Months

  Month Average Solar Energy (kWh/m²)
Shortest December 1.000
Longest June 6.400

Monthly Hours of Sunlight

Month Average Sunrise Average Sunset Average Daylight Hours
January 07:51:20 16:57:39 9.105
February 07:17:45 17:39:57 10.370
March 07:01:52 18:58:47 11.949
April 06:27:23 20:03:03 13.595
May 05:41:44 20:42:00 15.005
June 05:24:02 21:07:38 15.727
July 05:40:13 21:01:35 15.356
August 06:15:45 20:22:19 14.110
September 06:54:09 19:25:59 12.531
October 07:34:10 18:27:53 10.895
November 07:27:00 16:53:42 9.445
December 07:50:28 16:31:28 8.683

Average Monthly Solar Energy (kWh/m²)

Month Average Solar Energy (kWh/m²)
January 1.300
February 2.200
March 3.500
April 4.800
May 5.800
June 6.400
July 6.400
August 5.600
September 4.200
October 2.600
November 1.400
December 1.000

Average Monthly Rainfall and Snowmelt (mm)

Month Events per Month Event Frequency (Days) Rainfall and Snowmelt (mm) Precipitation per Event (mm)
January 6.5 5 33.4 5.1
February 5.4 5 32.9 6.1
March 6.7 5 42.5 6.3
April 7.7 4 53.0 6.9
May 9.2 3 64.4 7.0
June 10.1 3 73.9 7.3
July 10.1 3 73.3 7.3
August 8.9 3 66.0 7.4
September 9.8 3 78.7 8.0
October 10.2 3 74.4 7.3
November 8.2 4 58.7 7.2
December 7.5 4 39.6 5.3

Average Monthly Wind Speeds (m/s)

Month km/h m/s
January 9.9 2.8
February 10.4 2.9
March 10.3 2.9
April 9.4 2.6
May 7.8 2.2
June 6.9 1.9
July 6.6 1.8
August 6.5 1.8
September 7.2 2.0
October 7.9 2.2
November 8.6 2.4
December 9.1 2.5