Meteorology

You can select the meteorological database you want to use in your simulations. Not all meteorological databases are the same and some may be more accurate than others for a given location.

PVGIS

PVGIS is a European platform that provides information on solar radiation for any location in Europe and Africa, as well as a large part of Asia and America. You can choose between PVGIS 5.3 and PVGIS 5.2.

Depending on the location and the selected version, PVGIS uses a different default meteorological database. In the following images, you can see which databases are used by default for each location and version.

PVGIS 5.3:

PVGIS 5.2:

NSRDB

NSRDB, or National Solar Radiation Database, is a database developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of the United States. It provides detailed information on solar radiation in the United States and a large part of the world. In the following image, you can see which data is available for each region of the world:

TMY3

TMY3 is a file format for meteorological data defined by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). By selecting this option, you can attach any file you have in this format.

This option is interesting if you want to use audited or proprietary data sources.