St Catherine solar guide

What solar panels can produce in St Catherine.

A roof in Portmore can receive different sunshine from one in the northern hills. See what panels could produce through the year, then check the shade, roof condition and electricity use at your own property.

First parish guide · published 31 August 2026

Try a system size

What would that mean on a roof?

These figures estimate electricity from the panels, not money saved. A kWh is one unit of electricity on your bill; kW describes the panel system’s rated size. Your savings depend on when you use that electricity, whether you store it in a battery and whether you send any to JPS Jamaica.

Typical year

7,992 kWh about 666 kWh per month on average

Middle half of locations

7,698–8,321 kWh Differences between locations; your roof can change the result

Strongest month

March · 730 kWh Long-term average, not a forecast

Weakest month

November · 630 kWh Only about 14% below March

Colour map of modelled annual solar electricity output across St Catherine. Output is generally higher across the southern coastal plain and lower toward the northern hills. — **Annual solar electricity across St Catherine** Each square is approximately 1 km. The stepped edge shows the source resolution rather than pretending the estimate is more precise.

About 1,450About 1,780 kWh/kWp

The parish is not one number

The south is sunnier. The hills pull the average down.

The modelled output is generally stronger across the southern part of the parish, including the Portmore, Spanish Town and Old Harbour corridor. It reduces toward the hillier north around Linstead and Ewarton.

Across the middle half of St Catherine’s mapped locations, annual output falls between 1,540 and 1,664 kWh per installed kW. That spread is meaningful, but it is still smaller than the difference a shaded or badly oriented roof can make.

Parish cells analysed: 1,472
Central geographic range: ±4% around typical
Source period: 1999–2018

Month by month

St Catherine has a steady solar year.

March is strongest in the long-term model, but there is no dramatic winter collapse. Even the weakest average month produces about 86% of March’s output.

657Jan

637Feb

730Mar

695Apr

667May

643Jun

689Jul

688Aug

667Sep

652Oct

630Nov

637Dec

Estimated monthly generation in kWh for the selected system size. Hover, tap or focus a bar for its detailed value. The figures are long-term estimates, not a weather forecast.

View the monthly figures as a table

Month	Per installed kW	5 kW system
January	131.3 kWh	657 kWh
February	127.5 kWh	637 kWh
March	146.1 kWh	730 kWh
April	139.0 kWh	695 kWh
May	133.3 kWh	667 kWh
June	128.6 kWh	643 kWh
July	137.7 kWh	689 kWh
August	137.7 kWh	688 kWh
September	133.4 kWh	667 kWh
October	130.4 kWh	652 kWh
November	126.1 kWh	630 kWh
December	127.3 kWh	637 kWh

Generation is not the bill

A 5 kW system making 666 kWh a month will not automatically erase a 666 kWh bill.

Timing decides the value

Solar used while your home is running saves the retail cost of a JPS Jamaica unit. Surplus sent through net billing receives a much lower export credit.

A battery moves energy

A battery can carry daytime generation into the evening and provide outage cover, but it does not create extra solar electricity.

Your roof can lower the result

Shade, roof direction, heat, dirt, cable losses and equipment choices all move a real installation away from the parish benchmark. Use the panel guide to test those roof assumptions.

Use this page to judge the resource. Use the calculator to match a system to your bill, daytime use and outage priorities.

Before asking for quotes

The questions that matter in St Catherine.

Where does shade cross the roof?One tree or neighbouring building can matter more than the difference between two parts of the parish.
How is the array fixed for hurricane winds?Ask how loads travel through the rails and brackets into the roof structure—not just for a panel wind rating.
Is the equipment suitable for the location?Coastal properties need particular attention to salt corrosion, fasteners, enclosures and manufacturer warranty conditions.
Who handles approvals and after-sales work?For grid export, verify the exact inverter model and the installation’s JPS Jamaica interconnection path before buying.

Use the Jamaican installer checklist before accepting a quotation.

How we calculated this

Where do these estimates come from?

We use long-term sunshine data to estimate panel output across the parish. These are planning averages, not a forecast for your roof. Shade, roof direction and equipment can change the result.

See the data, calculation and source assumptions

We selected the 1,472 Global Solar Atlas PVOUT grid cells whose centres fall inside the St Catherine parish boundary, then calculated the mean, median, central 50% range and monthly means. Monthly values add back to the annual value.

The source models a free-standing crystalline-silicon system at optimum fixed tilt. It is suitable for parish comparison and early planning, not a guarantee for a particular roof.

Solar source: Global Solar Atlas 2.0 PVOUT
Source years: 1999–2018 long-term average
Spatial resolution: 30 arc-seconds, approximately 1 km
Calculation: Jamaica Solar Check parish aggregation

Solar data obtained from Global Solar Atlas 2.0, developed and operated by Solargis on behalf of the World Bank Group with ESMAP funding. Source data © 2019 Solargis, CC BY 4.0. Parish calculations and colour map are adaptations by Jamaica Solar Check; the source organisations do not endorse this site. Boundary geometry: geoBoundaries JAM ADM1, sourced from OpenStreetMap/Wambacher, CC BY-SA 2.0.