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 Solar Power System Production Maps
To get a vague idea of the general solar production capacity of your area. Click on the map links below. Each map is generate by the NREL.
These maps were developed from the Climatological Solar Radiation (CSR) Model. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy developed the CSR model. Specific information about this model can be found in Maxwell, George, and Wilcox (1998) and George and Maxwell (1999). This model uses information on cloud cover, atmospheric water vapor and trace gases, and the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere, to calculate the monthly average daily total insolation (sun and sky) falling on a horizontal surface. The cloud cover data used as input to the CSR model are an 8-year histogram (1985 - 1992) of monthly average cloud fraction provided for grid cells of approximately 40 km x 40 km in size. Thus, the spatial resolution of the CSR model output is defined by this database. The data were obtained from the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, and were developed from the U.S. Air Force Real Time Nephanalysis (RTNEPH) program. Atmospheric water vapor, trace gases, and aerosols are derived from a variety of sources, as summarized in the references. The procedures for converting the modeled global horizontal insolation into the insolation received by a flat plate collector at latitude tilt are described in Marion and Wilcox (1994).
Where possible, existing ground measurement stations are used to validate the model. Nevertheless, there is uncertainty associated with the meteorological input to the model, since some of the input parameters are not available at a 40km resolution. As a result, it is believed that the modeled values are accurate to approximately 10% of a true measured value within the grid cell. Due to terrain effects and other microclimate influences, the local cloud cover can vary significantly even within a single grid cell. Furthermore, the uncertainty of the modeled estimates increases with distance from reliable measurement sources and with the complexity of the terrain.
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