The National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB): Current Status

The National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) has evolved significantly since the first release of the point source database in 1992. The NSRDB has become the industry standard for public long-term time-series solar resource data for performance and economic analysis of solar energy projects. NREL continuously updates the scientific methods and spatiotemporal scale of the NSRDB data based on new research and improvements in satellite technology. Currently the NSRDB covers most of the globe and is a publicly available database of high-resolution solar resource data in the U.S. with over 150,000 users annually. NSRDB represents the state of the art in satellite-based estimation of solar resource information and uses a unique physics-based modeling approach that allows improvements in accuracy with the deployment of the next-generation geostationary satellites. This paper will cover the evolution of the NSRDB, current status of the database including estimated uncertainty and spatiotemporal scale and variability, and the advancement in modeling approach.