UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL RENEWABLE ENERGY ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL SOLAR IRRADIATION DATABASE, Version 1.

0 MONTHLY SOLAR IRRADIATION

The main section of the database includes site location data and monthly daily global horizontal irradiation, over the period of record. The irradiation unit used is kWh m-2 day-1.

The data are presented in tables with country name headings, 23 columns, and 1 or 2 rows for each named site. The first row gives the monthly mean values for irradiation. The following row, identified by the symbol "S" in Column 9, gives the standard deviations. In many cases, we received only monthly values averaged over several years, and not multiple years of monthly values, so that the standard deviation could not be computed.

The following table describes the information in each column.

COLUMN HEADING & DESCRIPTION

CODE: An alpha-numeric code used to reference the row of data to the source information (of printed document).

SITE: The city, town or station where the data was recorded.

LATITUDE: The site latitude expressed in degrees.

LATITUDE; HEMISPHERE (not labeled): N or S for northern or southern hemisphere. Lower case n or s indicates latitude not given with site data, but obtained elsewhere.

LONGITUDE: The site longitude expressed in degrees.

LONGITUDE; RELATIVE TO GREENWICH MERIDIAN (not labeled):E or W for east or west of the meridian. Lower case e or w indicates latitude not given with site data, but obtained here.

ELE: Elevation of the site in meters above sea level.

YRS: The number of years of data that are included

D: The type of data in columns 10-21:

I - Monthly mean daily global horizontal irradiation.

S - Unbiased standard deviation of global irradiation: where Si is the average value for year i, and Si bar is the average over n years.

10-21 JAN through DEC: Monthly values of: mean daily global horizontal irradiation in kWh m-2 day-1; or unbiased standard deviation of the global irradiation in kWh m-2 day-1.

22

AVG: The yearly average of the irradiation data in columns 10-21 for I data rows; or the standard deviation of the yearly averages for S data rows.

23

SRC: The nature of the data source. The symbols used are described below. Detailed information on data sources is given in printed document:

P - Irradiance measured using pyranometer.

H - Data calculated from cloud cover information or bright sunshine hours.

U - Data from source lacking information on instrumentation.

A few of the data sources made reference to the accepted standards for reporting insolation data. The standards include the International Pyrheliometric Scale (IPS) adopted in 1956, and the World Radiometric Reference (WRR); (WRR=IPS*1.022). The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recommends use of the WRR. Information in the printed document indicates the standard used where known.

Site names are listed alphabetically within their countries. In some cases, data sources give differing spellings to what appear (from coordinate data) to be the same location. In general, we respected the differences in spelling and present the source version. In some cases, the source lists site numbers or experiment numbers rather than location names. These sites are included for their location data.