National Solar Radiation Data Base 1991-2005 Update: User's Manual

摘要

This manual describes how to obtain and interpret the data products from the updated 1991-2005 National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB). This is an update of the original 19611990 NSRDB released in 1992. In 2003, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) investigated the feasibility of updating the NSRDB and began collaborative work with several agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the Northeast Regional Climate Center, the State University of New York at Albany (SUNY), the University of Oregon, the University of Wisconsin, and the private firm Solar Consulting Services. The original NSRDB held a serially complete data set for all sun-up hours for 239 stations. Because of expected changes in the roster of National Weather Service (NWS) sites, as well as the potential for adding NSRDB sites, the updated list of stations was not restricted to those same 239. Instead, it included as many stations and as much data as possible to increase the usefulness of the data set. This update therefore provides data for 1,454 stations. Users are encouraged to carefully consider the sections on modeled data and data uncertainty to better understand the applicability of the NSRDB for specific work.