I thought this was very interesting - there's the map upfront, but you can also drill into individual countries and regions with some nice tables. Some "obvious" things here, though a few surprises:

* The solar potential of a gloomy, northern locale like the UK is "only" half of somewhere sunny like Australia. Though I can imagine the swings between seasons are greater.

* Northern Canada has a surprising amount of potential, compared to European regions at the same latitude

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silverFork 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Canada compared to Mongolia of similar latitude, has lower potential though. Apparently that is because Mongolia is a desert and has no forests, very dry and high in elevation. The cold is no issue. The panels there produce 1.8 times more. The reason that Northern Europe is worse than Canada of the same latitude is apparently because of maritime proximity that increases humidity that diffuses light. Australia doesn't have maritime climate.

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pfdietz 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Cold actually increases PV output.

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thelastgallon 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I wonder if the map accounts for this,

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silverFork 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Without accounting for it, the maps wouldn't look like that. Cold, dry and high altitude increase the performance of solar.

	▲	pfdietz 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Dry and high altitude increase the performance because those increase the amount of sunlight hitting the ground. The effect of temperature would be on top of those effects.