National Solar Radiation Database

Abstract

The National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) is a serially complete collection of hourly and half-hourly values of meteorological data and the three most common measurements of solar radiation: global horizontal, direct normal and diffuse horizontal irradiance.

It covers the United States and a growing subset of international locations. These data have been collected at a sufficient number of locations and temporal and spatial scales to accurately represent regional solar radiation climates. For a given location covered by the dataset, it is possible to see the amount of solar energy that was at a given time, and to predict the potential future availability of solar energy based on past conditions.