NSRDB: 1991- 2005 Update

National Solar Radiation Data Base

1991- 2005 Update

About the Update

The updated 1991-2005 National Solar Radiation Database holds solar and meteorological data for 1,454 locations in the United States and its territories (see ). The National Climatic Data Center provides primary distribution of the NSRDB, but this site holds a solar research version of the NSRDB with additional solar fields (without meteorological data). The table below provides links to other sources of NSRDB data.

NSRDB Data Access Options

Data Set Distributor URL
NSRDB solar and filled meteorological fields NCDC ftp://ftp3.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/nsrdb^a
NSRDB solar and Integrated Surface Database
meteorological fields (no data filling) NCDC Release expected summer 2009 at http://cdo.ncdc.noaa.gov
and http://gis.ncdc.noaa.gov^a
NSRDB solar fields (no meteorological) NCDC ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/nsrdb-solar^b
SUNY 10-km gridded data NCDC ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/nsrdb-solar^b
NSRDB statistical summaries NCDC ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/nsrdb-solar^b
NSRDB research solar fields (no meteorological) NREL http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/1991-2005^b

^a No-cost access is domain-restricted to .mil, .gov, .edu and .k12. A fee-access restriction applies to all other domains.
^b No fee.

Data

Hourly Solar Data and Statistical Summaries
- Individual site-years by:
  - State and site name
  - USAF number
- All available solar data and statistical files in compressed site files (gzip compression) via FTP
  Files created using UNIX tar and gzip compression. Utilities are commonly available on UNIX, Mac, and
  Windows platforms to decompress and extract these files.

NEW!! Typical Meteorological Year (TMY3) Files

State and site name

USAF number

NSRDB_StationsMeta.csv (CSV, 112 KB)
Metadata file containing site USAF number, class, station name, coordinates, etc.
- NSRDB_StationsMetaMeta.doc (Word Document, 32 KB)
  Documentation for NSRDB_StationsMeta.csv.

Errata

Documentation

	National Solar Radiation Database 1991-2005 Update: User's Manual (PDF, 14 MB) Data format descriptions; information about the statistical summaries, data sources and flags; and description of the production process. National Solar Radiation Database 1991-2005 Factsheet (PDF, 560 KB)

Map of NSRDB Sites 1961-1990 & 1991-2005

Figure 1 shows the geographical coverage of the NSRDB ground stations, overlaid with the 1961-1990 NSRDB stations. See the User's Manual for a description of station classifications. Click on the map to expand it.

Measured Data - About 40 stations in the updated NSRDB include measured solar data, supplied by these agencies:

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program, DOE
Florida Solar Energy Center, State of Florida
Integrated Surface Irradiance Study (ISIS) and Surface Radiation Budget Measurement (SURFRAD) Networks, NOAA/ARL, NOAA/ESRL/Global Monitoring Division
Measurement and Instrumentation Data Center, NREL
University of Oregon Solar Radiation Monitoring Laboratory Network
University of Texas Solar Energy Laboratory.

Project Participants - Primary project funding came from NREL with support from the following collaborators:

The Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, State University of New York at Albany
Climate Systems Branch, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Climatic Data Center, U.S. Department of Commerce
Northeast Regional Climate Center, Cornell University
Solar Consulting Services, Colebrook, New Hampshire
Solar Radiation Monitoring Laboratory, University of Oregon.

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