Solar Analysis for Design

Optimizing for solar is a prime principle in sustainable design.

Based on climate data I have seen for our proposed house in Sullivan County I need to be most concerned about minimizing solar gain from mid-May through mid-September.

The best tool I have found for visualizing solar paths on our site is SunEarthTools.com.

On that site you can find your site on a map and overlay the solar diagram on it:

Once you measure the azimuth (angle from true north) and the angle of the elevation of top of any obstacle in that direction from a level angle of 0 for a variety of points in 360 degrees, you can enter them into the website to map any obstacles that might block sunlight over the course of the year (see below for a random set of points I selected):

These obstacles then get plotted on the solar chart so you can see when they cast shadows at different days of the year and times of the day: