Solar radiation databases

This section provide a list of solar radiation and meteorological databases free or to purchase.


PVGIS provides a large and accurate solar radiation free database for europe, Africa Mediterranean Basin and South-West Asia.
PVgis

Meteonorm gives full set of meteorological data. Developed from ground measurements by interpolation for solar energy and applied meteorology. Partly available through SoDa portal.
Meteonorm

Canada Natural Resources Canada :

Photovoltaic (PV) potential and insolation web-based maps from interpolated measurements

Canada Natural ressources

 

Solargis gives high accuracy global satellite-based database of historical, recent and forecast solar radiation, temperature and wind data.
Solargis data is supported by all major PV simulation softwares on the market.

Visit Solargis website...


The National Solar Radiation, database from 1961-1990.

The National Solar Radiation Data Base 1961-1990 (NSRDB) contains 30 years of solar radiation and supplementary meteorological data from 237 NWS sites in the U.S., plus sites in Guam and Puerto Rico.

Visit The National Solar Radiation website

NASA SSE NASA Solar Radiation Archive of over 200 satellite-derived meteorology and solar energy parameters, globally available at a resolution of 1x1 degrees. New! See our tutorial to get monthly and annual worldwide solar and climate data from NASA database.

S@tel-light : from satelite databases 1996-2000, Satel-light generate solar radiation maps in Europe.
S@tel-light

US dynamic solar atlas; on grid cells of ~ 40 km by 40 km provides monthly averages of daily total solar resource available to flat plate photovoltaic modules and concentrators. Only USA.
NREL

World Radiation Data Centre.
Solar radiation and radiation balance data (the world network). The WRDC is a laboratory of Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory, Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring formerly USSR State Committee for Hydrometeorology, and is located in St.Petersburg. It provides worldwide solar radiation database.
World Radiation Data Centre

Worldclimate (USA) gives Worldwide rainfall and temperature database (85000 sites).
Worldclimate

The NCEP/NCAR is a Reanalysis Project Atmospheric analyses using historical data and analyses of the current atmospheric state. Coverage: the entire world, with a grid cell of approx. 2 degrees in size. Available also through SoDa portal.
NCEP/NCAR

Restscreen is a free software that includes worlwide solar radiation database.
RETScreen

Solcast - Solar Irradiance Data Solcast offers global coverage of historical (up to 15y), recent (past 3 months) and live (past 7 days) solar irradiance data.
Free data access for researchers and hobbyists (home PV system use).

Visit SOLCAST website...

Satellite-based service for high-resolution solar radiation for Europe, Africa and Asia (DLR, Germany)
Solemi

SoDa HelioClim3 is a web service (Ecole des Mines de Paris) for profesionnals of solar energy. Worldwide solar radiation database.
SoDa HelioClim3

Runs a computer model which produces estimates of the daily total of solar radiation from the MTSAT-1R geostationary satellite.
Australia Bureau of Meteorology

Global solar Atlas provides a summary of solar power potential and solar resources globally. It is provided by the World Bank Group ...

Data and assessment tools for energy market development in developing countries (UNEP/GEF)
Solar Energy Resource Assessment - PVDAQ