What's New in the NSRDB

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

Abstract

The National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) provides solar resource data across the globe at a high temporal and spatial resolution. This data is primarily used in solar energy modeling. The NSRDB is updated annually for the United States and North, Central and South America and the data is currently available from 1998-2021. In 2022 the NSRDB was updated using the latest version of the underlying Physical Solar Model (PSM). This update includes improved surface albedo and gap-filling of cloud properties. The inclusion of these updates reduced the uncertainty in the data compared to previous versions of the NSRDB. The Himawari and Meteosat Indian Ocean Data Coverage (IODC) satellites were added to the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) and made our coverage global. While standard data from the GOES continues to be served at an hourly 4km x 4km resolution, full resolution data has also been made available to the user. The NSRDB now contains over 200Tb of data with nearly 40Tb being added annually. We provide significant flexibility for data download depending on the amount of data required by the users. In this paper we provide an update on the current status on the NSRDB.
Original languageAmerican English
Number of pages3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023
Event2023 IEEE 50th Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC) - San Juan, Puerto Rico
Duration: 11 Jun 202316 Jun 2023

Conference

Conference2023 IEEE 50th Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC)
CitySan Juan, Puerto Rico
Period11/06/2316/06/23

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/CP-5D00-88900

Keywords

  • photovoltaic systems
  • satellites
  • sea surface
  • solar energy
  • South America
  • spatial databases
  • uncertainty

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