A Review of the Existing Solar Irradiation Databases

Abstract

Huge gains in the form of time and cost savings, increased productivity and efficiency will be obtained by designers and researchers of solar technology systems if relevant information is available and easily accessible for every site in the world. The Internet has played a major role in making this information available to users through various online databases for solar radiation. However, often times many of the available databases do not meet actual users ‘needs. In general most users prefer hourly or daily irradiation data with a spatial resolution of a maximum of 20km, but unfortunately the number of ground measuring station around the globe are too small to attain such accuracy. The accessibility is also made poor by the complexity of the data which comes from various storage standards, units, ways of expressing time etc. in the databases. Moreover, users often face difficulties in selecting the database that meet their needs for a particular time and location. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the available online databases with the information that they provide and their advantages and disadvantages. Demonstrations are also shown for the applicability of one online design software called HELIOSCOPE. Recommendations and proposals for future work were given to address the discrepancies between users’ needs and the available databases