How Much Sunlight Will Reach Your Solar Panels in Georgia and the Southeast?
The sunny weather forecast for Savannah, Atlanta, and Georgia
You live here, so you know how hot and humid it gets.
You also know how much electricity you have to burn to keep the AC running all day. And especially for businesses with customer storefronts or showrooms, or farmers with poultry houses, filling up all that square footage with cool air costs some serious money.
So you’ve probably wondered how much you might save on your energy costs with solar panels. You’ve probably heard that there are great tax and other government incentives for solar power in Georgia. But then you have to also wonder:
- How much sun does Savannah and the rest of Georgia get each year?
- Can you count on the sun to deliver the energy you need?
- How does Georgia’s sunny weather compare with other states?
Here’s the Solar Energy Weather Forecast You’ve Been Looking For
For this data, from currentresults.com, we have a couple terms to define first:
“Sunny” means no more than 30% cloud cover during daylight hours
“Partly Sunny” means 40-70% cloud cover during daylight hours – that’s from sunrise to sunset.
Also, Georgia gets over 12 hours of daylight for six months of the year, from about March 20th to September 20th. It dips down to a low of about 10 hours per day on December 21st. So we have pretty consistent patterns of daylight without a lot of fluctuation.
Average Days with Sun:
That means 59.4% of the year, Georgia has sunny or partly sunny days.
How does that compare with other parts of the country? Washington, Oregon, Ohio, and New York are almost completely overcast for over half of the year. So solar energy will not produce the same value in those states. It will take longer to recover the initial investment. States like Arizona, California, and Nevada have the most sun.
Now, what about actual sunlight? Another way to measure this is measuring the percent of time sun actually hits the ground each day. This is called “percent sun.”
When it comes to your solar panels, the % Sun is really the number that counts the most, because this is how much time per day your panels will be storing energy.
Percent Sun Data in Georgia:
While sun is more important than heat, the temperatures help to fill out this solar energy weather forecast.
Days per year over certain temperatures in Savannah:
This means that for one-fifth of the year, it’s over 90 degrees in Savannah. That’s hot. And that hot sun beats down an average of 62% of the day.
However, solar efficiency actually goes down in high heat. So of these 260 sunny days over 70 degrees, it’s the ones below 90 that will make your solar panels the happiest. The only reason these numbers aren’t higher is because the humidity and heat produce those flash thunderstorms we all love so much. They come and go quickly, but they do interrupt the sun during the summer months, and actually are the reason Savannah actually gets the majority of its rain in the summer.
So, how much sun will your solar panels get in Savannah and the rest of Georgia?
Over 60% of the day, the sun will be activating your solar panels. And that’s why, with the average cost to install solar panels, and especially with grants and tax rebates, businesses, farms, and homes in Georgia can reasonably expect to recover their initial investment between 5 to 10 years, and then have many wonderful years afterward of drastically reduced energy bills and the satisfaction of generating their own power.
Read: Everything You Need to Know About Going Solar in Savannah.
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