Satellite-Based Solar Resource Data Sets for India 2002-2012

A new 10-km hourly solar resource product was created for India. This product was created using satellite radiances from the Meteosat series of satellites. The product contains global horizontal irradiances (GHI) and direct normal irradiances (DNI) for the period from 2002 to 2011. An additional solar resource data set covering the period from January 2012 to June 2012 was created solely for validation because this period overlaps ground measurements that were made available from the Indian Ministry of New and Renewable Energy's (MNRE's) National Institute for Solar Energy for five stations that are part of MNRE's solar resource network. These measurements were quality checked using the SERI QC software and used to validate the satellite product. A comparison of the satellite product to the ground measurements for the five stations shows good agreement. This report also presents a comparison of the new version of solar resource data to the previous version, which covered the period from 2002 to 2008.