3TIER Solar Time-series

Designed for: Developer & Engineer/Consultant

For pricing and purchase details:

Product Description

Primary Uses

Integrating scientific data into internal analysis tools and software
Community-scale solar prospecting
Portfolio site comparison
Initial project feasibility
Comparing irradiance with load profile or spot price

Preliminary observations can be helpful for initial prospecting, but they only offer a narrow perspective of a possible solar site. To really understand the potential of your installation, you need to understand the different types of solar irradiance at your site as well as their intensity throughout the year.

3TIER Solar Time-series provides all the resource information you need to determine the production potential and expected resource performance for residential or light commercial solar installations and facilitates additional assessment for larger projects.

Based on proven science and over a decade of visible satellite imagery, our time-series offers a complete 10 to 13-year data file of hour-by-hour values for GHI (Global Horizontal Irradiance), DNI (Direct Normal Irradiance), and DIF (Diffuse Horizontal Irradiance) at a horizontal resolution of roughly 3 kilometers. Provided as a comma-separated values (CSV) data file, this product ensures easy data upload to the software of your choice, enabling more comprehensive analysis of the intensity and variability of solar resources at your site, and ultimately a deeper understanding of your site’s viability.

As well as providing you with the information you need to make smarter decisions, the 3TIER time-series product also offers a consistent approach to solar prospecting and assessment. When you are looking at multiple locations, how do you know that you are comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges? Our time-series data files are based on a contiguous, high-resolution solar irradiance dataset and uniform methodologies, enabling more accurate point-to-point comparisons and providing you with a clearer picture of the risks for every potential site in your portfolio.

Technical Overview

Product Highlights

Global coverage
Spatial resolution of 2 arc minutes (approximately 3 km)
Based on 10 to 13 years of satellite data with continual updates
Founded on in-house research and the published work of Dr. Richard Perez of SUNY Albany
Validated and developed using widely recognized datasets worldwide

Features Comparison

	3TIER Solar Time-series	FullView Solar Site CVA	FullView Solar Site Resource Assessment
Product Features
Annual-Mean Irradiance maps of GHI, DNI, DIF		X
Monthly-Mean Irradiance maps of GHI, DNI, DIF		X
Monthly variation of Irradiance		X
Diurnal variation of Irradiance		X
Irradiance histograms for GHI, DNI, DIF		X
Monthly variation of Irradiance (with MOS correction)			X
Diurnal variation of Irradiance (with MOS correction)			X
Irradiance histograms for GHI, DNI, DIF (with MOS correction)			X
Monthly temperature and wind speed variability (min, mean, max)		X	X
Diurnal temperature and wind speed variability and 12x24 table of hourly means		X	X
Time-series for solar GHI, DNI, DIF	X	X
Time-series for solar GHI, DNI, DIF with MOS correction			X
Time-series for 10 meter wind speed and 2 meter temperature (length dependent on region of purchase)		X
Time-series for wind speed and temperature based on 4.5 km NWP model run			X
Validation Report on the MOS-corrected irradiance time-series compared to observations			X

Methodology

3TIER produced the first global solar irradiance map and time-series dataset at roughly three times the resolution of previous US solar datasets and at thirty times the resolution of global datasets available from NASA. Based on over a decade of satellite imagery and cutting-edge technology, our uniform methodology is supported by a large scientific and research community and results in a consistent map and dataset, enabling more accurate point-to-point comparisons.

The dataset is based on actual, half-hourly, high-resolution visible satellite imagery observations via the broadband visible wavelength channel at a 2 arc minute resolution. These data have been processed to hourly GHI, DNI, and DIF values. 3TIER processes the satellite images based on a combination of in-house research and algorithms published in peer- reviewed scientific literature. These algorithms contain parameters and coefficients that are based on empirical fits to observational data. The specific satellites and length of time varies slightly by region due to differences in the availability of data from region to region. See the chart below for more details.

Regions	Satellites	Temporal Coverage
Western Hemisphere	GOES 8 - 12	13 years (January 1997 - December 2009)
South Asia and Middle East	Meteosat 5, Meteosat 7	10 years (January 1999 – April 2009)
East Asia and Oceania	GMS 5, GOES 9, AMTSAT	10 years (December 1999 – March 2009)
Europe and Africa	Meteosat 7, Meteosat 9	11 years (July 1998 – June 2009)