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National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB)

Publicly accessible License 

The National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) is a serially complete collection of meteorological and solar irradiance data sets for the United States and a growing list of international locations for 1998-2023. The NSRDB is updated annually and provides foundational information to support U.S. Department of Energy programs, research, industry and the general public.

The NSRDB provides time-series data at 30-minute resolution of resource averaged over surface cells of 0.038 degrees in both latitude and longitude, or nominally 4 km in size. Additionally time series data at 5 minutes for the US and 10 minutes for North, Central and South America at 2 km resolution are produced from the next generation of GOES satellites and made available from 2019. The solar radiation values represent the resource available to solar energy systems. The data was created using cloud properties which are generated using the AVHRR Pathfinder Atmospheres-Extended (PATMOS-x) algorithms developed by the University of Wisconsin. Fast all-sky radiation model for solar applications (FARMS) in conjunction with the cloud properties, and aerosol optical depth (AOD) and precipitable water vapor (PWV) from ancillary source are used to estimate solar irradiance (GHI, DNI, and DHI). The Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) is computed for clear skies using the REST2 model. For cloud scenes identified by the cloud mask, FARMS is used to compute GHI and FARMS DNI is used to compute the Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI). The PATMOS-X model uses radiance images in visible and infrared channels from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) series of geostationary weather satellites. Ancillary variables needed to run REST2 and FARMS (e.g., aerosol optical depth, precipitable water vapor, and albedo) are derived from NASA's Modern Era-Retrospective Analysis (MERRA-2) dataset. Temperature and wind speed data are also derived from MERRA-2 and provided for use in NREL's System Advisor Model (SAM) to compute PV generation.

Citation Formats

National Renewable Energy Laboratory. (2018). National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) [data set]. Retrieved from https://dx.doi.org/10.25984/1810289.
Export Citation to RIS
Sengupta, Manajit, Habte, Aron, Xie, Yu, Lopez, Anthony, and Buster, Grant. National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB). United States: N.p., 28 Sep, 2018. Web. doi: 10.25984/1810289.
Sengupta, Manajit, Habte, Aron, Xie, Yu, Lopez, Anthony, & Buster, Grant. National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB). United States. https://dx.doi.org/10.25984/1810289
Sengupta, Manajit, Habte, Aron, Xie, Yu, Lopez, Anthony, and Buster, Grant. 2018. "National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB)". United States. https://dx.doi.org/10.25984/1810289. https://data.openei.org/submissions/1.
@div{oedi_1, title = {National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB)}, author = {Sengupta, Manajit, Habte, Aron, Xie, Yu, Lopez, Anthony, and Buster, Grant.}, abstractNote = {The National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) is a serially complete collection of meteorological and solar irradiance data sets for the United States and a growing list of international locations for 1998-2023. The NSRDB is updated annually and provides foundational information to support U.S. Department of Energy programs, research, industry and the general public.

The NSRDB provides time-series data at 30-minute resolution of resource averaged over surface cells of 0.038 degrees in both latitude and longitude, or nominally 4 km in size. Additionally time series data at 5 minutes for the US and 10 minutes for North, Central and South America at 2 km resolution are produced from the next generation of GOES satellites and made available from 2019. The solar radiation values represent the resource available to solar energy systems. The data was created using cloud properties which are generated using the AVHRR Pathfinder Atmospheres-Extended (PATMOS-x) algorithms developed by the University of Wisconsin. Fast all-sky radiation model for solar applications (FARMS) in conjunction with the cloud properties, and aerosol optical depth (AOD) and precipitable water vapor (PWV) from ancillary source are used to estimate solar irradiance (GHI, DNI, and DHI). The Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) is computed for clear skies using the REST2 model. For cloud scenes identified by the cloud mask, FARMS is used to compute GHI and FARMS DNI is used to compute the Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI). The PATMOS-X model uses radiance images in visible and infrared channels from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) series of geostationary weather satellites. Ancillary variables needed to run REST2 and FARMS (e.g., aerosol optical depth, precipitable water vapor, and albedo) are derived from NASA's Modern Era-Retrospective Analysis (MERRA-2) dataset. Temperature and wind speed data are also derived from MERRA-2 and provided for use in NREL's System Advisor Model (SAM) to compute PV generation.}, doi = {10.25984/1810289}, url = {https://data.openei.org/submissions/1}, journal = {}, number = , volume = , place = {United States}, year = {2018}, month = {09}}
https://dx.doi.org/10.25984/1810289

Details

Data from Sep 28, 2018

Last updated Jul 18, 2024

Submitted Sep 22, 2020

Organization

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Contact

Manajit Sengupta

Authors

Manajit Sengupta

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Aron Habte

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Yu Xie

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Anthony Lopez

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Grant Buster

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Research Areas

DOE Project Details

Project Name NSRDB

Project Number 34218

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