3TIER Solar Data

3TIER Solar Data
Resolution: 2 arc minute spatial resolution
Format: Arc ASCII Grid, CSV, GeoTIFF, KMZ
Projection: Lambert conformal conic
Datum: NAD 27, 83, WGS 84
Coverage: Canada, US, Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico (other areas upon request)

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3TIER Solar Data

With over 9 years experience, 3TIER is a global leader in renewable energy information services. 3TIER’s Solar GIS Data Layers provide invaluable data to explore solar resource potential throughout North America and identify the best locations for solar power development. Based on state-of-the-art methodologies and over a decade of satellite-derived data, 3TIER data layers provide annual mean values of the three irradiance types of interest to solar power developers.

3TIER Solar GIS Data Layers are derived from 13 years of satellite imagery using a uniform processing methodology supported by the global atmospheric science and research community. 3TIER was the first to employ this methodology across the Western Hemisphere, resulting is a consistent dataset that enables more accurate point-to-point comparisons. The dataset offers roughly three times the spatial resolution of previous U.S. solar datasets.

  • SurfRad.
  • Baseline Surface Radiation Networks.
  • National Solar Radiation Database.
  • NREL Annex II.
  • Linke Turbidity Database from Ecole des Mines de Paris.
  • National Snow and Ice Data Center (high-resolution snow dataset).

Methodology Overview:
The dataset is based on 13 years (January 1997 - December 2009) of actual, half-hourly, high-resolution satellite imagery observations from GOES 11 and GOES 12 via the broadband visible wavelength channel at a 2 arc minute resolution. These data have been processed to hourly GHI, DNI, and DIF values at a horizontal resolution of roughly 3 km. 3TIER processes the satellite images based on a combination of in-house research and the published work of Dr. Richard Perez of SUNY Albany. Our algorithms contain parameters and coefficients that are based on empirical fits to observational data. The result is a dataset with a higher spatial and temporal resolution and a substantially smaller RMSE than the NREL dataset.



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