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The Solar Prospector, now decomissioned, is a tool created by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) that aimed to provide access to geospatial information for solar applications within the United States. It was implemented as a web site at http://maps.nrel.gov/prospector and allowed to download solar resource data in a variety of formats.
 

Solar Prospector data was based on satellites images. The following variables were available in hourly values:

•Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI)

•Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI)

•Diffuse Irradiance

•Ambient Temperature

•Wind Speed

 

The service was available for free.

 

Details of the Method    
 

The data from Solar Prospector are the Solar anywhere data. The difference is that the Solar Prospector service is free. It is then important to understand that the Solar Prospector data differs from the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRD) data provided by NREL: NREL provides the Solar Prospector graphical interface but not the data. Those data is provided for specific years and also as Typical Meteorological Year (TMY). Satellites images are analyzed with the SUNY model, no ground station measurements are involved as in the other TMY2/TMY3 data sources.

 

The file format is either a table of comma-separated values (CSV), or the TMY2 format, which can be readily imported into PVsyst.