I’ve got some old but exciting news!!
The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in cooperation with India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), through funding from the U.S. Department of Energy(DOE) recently released solar maps for India; Now this is very exciting news considering the timing of the Solar India Project. I was ecstatic to find that they have made GIS data public which was not the case before. Up until now we have had only low resolution static maps to work with, but now with GIS data and high-resolution solar maps, one can extrapolate information for specific states and cities from this larger dataset.
The new dataset contains high-resolution solar resource maps and data for India. The high-resolution (10-km) solar resource data was developed using weather satellite data incorporated into a site-time specific solar mapping approach developed at the U.S. State University of New York at Albany. The data were output as data in geographic information system (GIS) format and as static maps.
The dataset includes monthly and annual direct normal irradiance (DNI) and global horizontal irradiance (GHI) maps. These maps were developed from hourly data spanning January 2002 to December 2008 generated through application of the SUNY satellite to irradiance model.
In English, it means that these maps show direct (normal) incident, diffuse (horizontal) and global (direct+diffuse) horizontal radiation data in Watt-hour per square meter (wh/m2). This data is also adjusted for the time zone difference (+5.5 GMT). I love the fact that you can download hourly data in a .csv format. You do this by typing in the longitude and latitude for the location of your choice. I downloaded data for my home town Hyderabad by typing in the geographical location: 17.366 N and 78.476 E and the closest cell of data available was 17.35 N and 78.45 E – pretty close eh!
The downloaded file has data for both un-shifted time and shifted time (i.e, applying the time zone difference). I created daily averages from the hourly data along with averages (Figure 1).
Obviously, from the solar applications perspective, it makes more sense to see the data for each month. So I calculated the monthly and annual average data (figure 2 and 3 below). The dashed lines indicate annual averages. So, Hyderabad receives 140 and 55 kWh/m2 direct and diffuse radiation respectively. It receives approximately 5 kWh/m2/day annual global incident radiation.
Hyderabad Solar Data
Source: NREL
Coming soon: A tool that can calculate the incident radiation at any given point in India!
I’m excited about this tool! I will post it as soon as it is complete, so look forward to it!
Until then,
P
Links:
http://www.nrel.gov/international/ra_india.html
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/new_data/India/
Naresh
April 27, 2011
Thank you Pallavi Information is very useful
Pallavi
April 27, 2011
You are welcome, Naresh.
M.S.Raja Ganesh
July 25, 2011
Dear Madam,
I am doing M.E. (Power systems Engineering) course at Thiagarajar college of Engineering, Madurai,Tamilnadu. I am doing my P.G. Thesis in the area of “Design of Solar thermal electric power plant “. In this regard, i need solar insolation and temperature hourly data for Madurai region. Please do the needful
Thanking you,
Yours faithfully,
Raja Ganesh
Pallavi
September 28, 2011
Hi Mr. Ganesh,
You can download the Solar Resource Tool (here) and input the co-ordinates for Madurai and get the solar insolation information you are looking for.
The lat/long for Madurai are: 78.10 E Longitude/ 9.58 N latitude
Hope this helps,
Pallavi