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  • Solar Resources by Class and Country

    Metadata Updated: September 1, 2015

    These estimates are derived from the best available solar resource data available to NREL. Resources are organized by class and country. Resolution varies spatially from 1 km to 1 degree (approximately 100 km) depending on the data source. High spatial resolution datasets (1 km to 40 km cells) were modeled to support country or regional projects. Where high resolution datasets were not available, data from NASA’s Surface Meteorology and Solar Energy (SSE) version 6 database were used.

    The data represent total potential solar energy per year as a function of land area per solar class (KWh/m²/day). Each solar class correlates to a specific 0.5 kWh/m²/day range. Energy is calculated by multiplying the productive land by the class, conversion efficiency and number of days per year. In this case, a standard calendar year of 365 days was used. The conversion efficiency rate applied was 10%.

    E = Productive Land * kWh/m²/day * 365 days * 10% efficiency

    The solar data has been derived from solar data measured or modeled between 1961 and 2008, depending on the dataset.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: Creative Commons CCZero

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date February 23, 2015
    Metadata Updated Date September 1, 2015

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from Energy JSON

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date February 23, 2015
    Metadata Updated Date September 1, 2015
    Publisher National Renewable Energy Laboratory
    Unique Identifier http://en.openei.org/doe-opendata/dataset/19316a50-e55d-45e2-b692-efcebfe16c95
    Maintainer
    Donna Heimiller
    Maintainer Email
    Public Access Level public
    Accessurl http://en.openei.org/doe-opendata/dataset/19316a50-e55d-45e2-b692-efcebfe16c95/resource/e58a209c-57c0-4423-ba90-2ff867baa015/download/totalsolarresourcetiltlatflattenedranked.xls
    Bureau Code 019:20
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Data Quality True
    Format application/vnd.ms-excel
    Harvest Object Id c0c84e08-eba9-4b67-94be-a015b57e99f3
    Harvest Source Id 8d4de31c-979c-4b50-be6b-ea3c72453ff6
    Harvest Source Title Energy JSON
    Homepage URL http://www.nrel.gov
    License https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
    Data Last Modified 2015-08-21T20:52:10Z
    Program Code 019:000
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 242eea62d632cda52bccfd0b63c8a9f438bb71d5
    Source Schema Version 1.1

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