Our next step was to provide an estimate for how much energy could be generated from a solar farm in a high-scoring area from our MCE results. As mentioned before, we could not get a solar energy map for the whole island because of the extremely long run-time required by the Area Solar Radiation Tool to calculate the amount of incoming solar radiation for each pixel in our DEM over a year. In order to estimate the amount of energy generated from a potential solar farm on Haida Gwaii, we needed to run the Area Solar Radiation Tool on a much smaller area where our MCE predicts the most optimal location for a solar farm. So we clipped our DEM to a relatively small rectangle that encompassed continuous high-scoring MCE areas and ran the Area Solar Radiation Tool on this clipped DEM layer to find an estimate of how much solar radiation they would throughout a year, in WH/m^2 (Watt-hours per meters-squared).  Using the Area Solar Radiation tool, a solar map was generated from a clip of our DEM by specifying the latitude of ~53 degrees and a yearly interval. This solar map takes into consideration the changes in the elevation (azimuth) and position of the sun, as well as any shading effect caused by trees.

Next, we took a large continuous area with high scoring solar MCE results (seen below), and clipped the solar energy raster to a rectangular area, which would signify the area encompasses by a solar farm. Using the Zonal Statistics as Table tool, we then found the sum of each pixel in the clipped area. This signifies the total amount of power (in WH/m^2) that is received over a year. It was determined that the sum of the solar energy pixels in this area summed to 827414404 Wh/m^2.

Divide this value by 8760 (hours in a year) to convert from watt-hours to watts and get the total energy (in W/m^2) received in this polygon over a year, which was determined to be equal to 94453.7 W/m^2.

Next, multiply this by the total area of the rectangle (350 meters by 800 meters, approximately) to get the total amount of energy received over a whole year. This was determined to be equal to 26447 MW.

Next, divide this value by the amount of days in a year (365) and then multiply by the approximated solar panel efficiency (~15% = 0.15) to get the power capacity of a 350 meter by 800 meter solar farm. This was determined to be 10.86 MW.