area solar radiation output multiband raster

Question

I'm using area solar radiation in arcgis pro to calculate solar radiation for a day with hourly intervals. For the time configuration, I use "within day" and start hour is 0 and end hour is 24. I get a raster with 15 bands. I think the 15 bands correspond to the 15 hours with solar radiation but I don't know what hour of the day each band represents. Is there a way to figure this out? Thank you!

RyanDeBruyn · Answer

Hi @ShirleyYueLi  (coming in late.. better late than never?)  Just wanted to add for future reference.

You are correct in your interpretation of the number of bands and the hours of sunlight.

This can be represented by the Sun Map Calculation .  You can run this using the Solar Radiation Graphics tool.

In terms of the specific hours... this is dependent on your location (latitude) and day.  The sunmap sectors are calculated based on the time configuration, in your case one full day from sunrise to sunset (available light), where each sector is based on the interval specified for your time period.  Unfortunately, the specific hour of each sector is not specified as an attribute in the result.

Good luck!

example sunmap

ShirleyYueLi · Answer

Thank you for the quick reply! I guess this refers to the settings when I ran the tool? I'm attaching a screenshot of the time configuration.

the result I got has 15 bands and they are named Band_1, Band_2,....Band_15 but I don't know what hour of the day these bands represent. I ran the same tool for December 15, and the result has only 9 bands. So I guess it only includes hours/bands with solar radiation but how can I know what the hours are?

danretired · Answer

Area Solar Radiation (Spatial Analyst)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

Is this what you are referring to?

For within-day time configurations, the start and end times are displayed as solar time (units: decimal hours). Use the time conversion dialog box window to convert the local standard time and local solar time (HMS). When converting local standard time to solar time, the program accounts for equation of time.