What does SolarView do?
SolarView gives an estimate of the available solar energy at a particular location for people considering installing a solar energy system. The program allows users to determine the amount of solar energy (insolation) that would be received at a given location based on local topography (landscape), orientation of the solar panels and other obstructions, such as buildings.
Click the button below to go to service
Service type: Derived/ Modelled Data
How does it do it?
The program combines an image of the local landscape with irradiance data from the nearest climate station. This is typically more than 10 years of "sunlight hours" data. You should be able to recognise the local landscape for each location entered into the system.
The x-axis of the plot is in degrees bearing, i.e.west (-90°), North (0°), and east (90°) (Figure 1).
The 5 curves are the path of the sun on the 21 Dec (summer solstice), 21 Jun (winter solstice), 21 Mar (autumn equinox), 21 Aug & 21 Oct and the numbers indicate how much solar energy is available on that day (Figure 1).
SolarView resources
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SolarView help
This calculator estimates the solar energy that can be collected by a solar capture device (solar panel) at a given address, panel direction and roof slope. -
SolarView example
An illustrated example, showing how to input data and interpret SolarView results.