Solar Radiation Monitoring Network

The University of Oregon's (UO) Solar Radiation Monitoring Network consists of 38 monitoring stations in the Pacific Northwest (Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming). The following parameters are monitored in near real time at most of the stations: total solar radiation (global horizontal radiation); direct normal irradiance (beam radiation); diffuse horizontal irradiance (diffuse sky radiation); ultraviolet radiation; barometric pressure; air temperature; rainfall; wind speed; wind direction; relative humidity; and solar cell performance. These monitoring stations can supply the engineering data needed for large-scale solar electric system designs and for improved groundtruthing of satellite solar radiation data.<br>

A variety of types of data files can be downloaded for each site:<br>

Cumulative summary files summarize single types of data for the entire period during which measurements have been taken.

Daily total files have total solar radiation readings for each day during a given year.

Monthly average files record averaged solar radiation over 5-, 10, 15, or 60-minute intervals for each month of a given year.

Single element profile files display values of a single data type in a tabular format, where there is a column for each hour of the day, and a row for each day of the month.

Archival files contain original and corrected short interval (5-, 10-, 15-, or 60-minute) data for each day during a given month. Each of these files typically contains a number of different solar radiation and meteorological data streams.

Multifilter Rotating Shadowband Radiometer (MFR-7) files contain spectral and broadband global, diffuse, and beam measurements from an MFR.

Average annual and monthly irradiance maps show the amount of solar radiation available in the Pacific Northwest.

The UO Solar Radiation Monitoring Network complements and provides additional geographic coverage to the DOE Cooperative Networks For Renewable Resource Measurements (CONFRRM) Network, the NOAA SURFRAD Network, and the NOAA Integrated Surface Irradiance Study (ISIS) Network.