National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB)

Description

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.

Resources

Name Format Description Link
0 NSRDB Official website. Provides useful information about what the NSRDB is and outlines potential data applications. https://nsrdb.nrel.gov
47 Outlines the variables that are provided by the NSRDB. This document can help guide database usage for the NSRDB. https://data.openei.org/files/1/NSRDB_VariableMap.txt
37 Examples of using the HSDS Service to Access NREL NSRDB data. https://github.com/NREL/hsds-examples/blob/master/notebooks/03_NSRDB_introduction.ipynb
21 The Department of Energy's National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) is a serially complete collection of hourly and half-hourly values of the three most common measurements of solar radiation – global horizontal, direct normal, and diffuse horizontal irradiance — and meteorological data. These data have been collected at a sufficient number of locations and temporal and spatial scales to accurately represent regional solar radiation climates. These data are available for download without login credentials through the free and publicly accessible Open Energy Data Initiative (OEDI) data viewer which allows users to browse and download individual or groups of files. https://data.openei.org/s3_viewer?bucket=nrel-pds-nsrdb
21 The Department of Energy's National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) is a serially complete collection of hourly and half-hourly values of the three most common measurements of solar radiation – global horizontal, direct normal, and diffuse horizontal irradiance — and meteorological data. This page includes information about access to the data via AWS command line interface (CLI) and does not require an AWS account. https://registry.opendata.aws/nrel-pds-nsrdb/
21 Note: This version is outdated. Please use either the Azure or AWS version instead. The NSRDB is a serially complete collection of hourly and half-hourly values of the three most common measurements of solar radiation - global horizontal, direct normal, and diffuse horizontal irradiance - and meteorological data. The current NSRDB is modeled using multi-channel measurements from geostationary satellites. The older versions of the NSRDB were modeled using cloud and weather information primarily collected at airports. Sufficient number of locations and temporal and spatial scales were used to represent regional solar radiation climates accurately. Using the NSRDB data, it is possible to estimate the amount of solar energy that is historically available at a given time and location anywhere in the United States. The NSRDB is also expanding to encompass a growing list of international locations . Using the long-term NSRDB data in various models, it is possible to predict the potential future availability of solar energy in a location based on past conditions. Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) data can be derived from the NSRDB time series datasets. Visit NREL's TMY page for detailed information about this data type and its uses. The latest addition to the NSRDB is spectral datasets. Spectral datasets are calculated on demand based on user specifications of tilt and orientation. Please visit NREL's Spectral Datasets page to learn more. The NSRDB metadata has been parsed into BigQuery tables for easy subsetting and analysis. This public dataset is hosted in Google Cloud Storage and available free to use. https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/details/nrel/nsrdb
21 The NSRDB is a serially complete collection of hourly and half-hourly values of the three most common measurements of solar radiation - global horizontal, direct normal, and diffuse horizontal irradiance - and meteorological data. The current NSRDB is modeled using multi-channel measurements from geostationary satellites. The older versions of the NSRDB were modeled using cloud and weather information primarily collected at airports. Sufficient number of locations and temporal and spatial scales were used to represent regional solar radiation climates accurately. Using the NSRDB data, it is possible to estimate the amount of solar energy that is historically available at a given time and location anywhere in the United States. The NSRDB is also expanding to encompass a growing list of international locations . Using the long-term NSRDB data in various models, it is possible to predict the potential future availability of solar energy in a location based on past conditions. Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) data can be derived from the NSRDB time series datasets. Visit NREL's TMY page for detailed information about this data type and its uses. The latest addition to the NSRDB is spectral datasets. Spectral datasets are calculated on demand based on user specifications of tilt and orientation. Please visit NREL's Spectral Datasets page to learn more. The NSRDB metadata has been parsed into BigQuery tables for easy subsetting and analysis. This page includes information about access to the data via Microsoft Azure's AI-For-Earth program and does not require an Azure account. https://microsoft.github.io/AIforEarthDataSets/data/nsrdb.html

Tags

  • solar-radiation
  • data
  • processed-data
  • solar-resource
  • weather
  • solar
  • surface-albedo
  • direct-beam-component
  • meteorology
  • irradiance
  • aerosol
  • dni
  • pressure
  • wind
  • cloud-type
  • ghi
  • available-resource
  • meteorological
  • temperature
  • zenith-angle
  • albedo
  • dhi
  • cloud
  • energy
  • zenith

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