For solar spectral irradiance (W/m^2-nm), I use SMARTS from NREL: http://www.nrel.gov/rredc/smarts/. This is a command line program that generates a text file with the spectral irradiance depending on location, date/time, aerosol content of the atmosphere, etc. You may integrate the spectral irradiance for an integrated value.
For weather data, I have used the Global Hourly Data (legacy) from the National Climatic Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets These datasets are based on observations. Some are incomplete. I hope this helps.
1. Using weather stations and, if necessary, interpolate them. For example, for temperature you can use E-OBS dataset (freely available for research)
2. For solar radiation you can use satellite data (e.g. CM-SAF satellites)
3. You can interpolate (downscale) global reanalysis data (e.g. ERA-INTERIM, CSFR, MERRA)
In all the cases you have a certain amount of uncertainty but there are many scientific works that can give you a hint about the best datasets and methodologies.
My favorite is US Department of Energy's website. Combined data i.e. wind, insolation, humidity etc. is compiled into single file. It can be directly used with the SAM software.
For the United States, Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) data files can be obtained from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). To obtain the files, I suggest you contact Ibrahim Reda at NREL.
This is a vast question! There are many possible sources of data, from ground observations to satellite-derived data and reanalysis. What region are you interested in?
For Europe, Asia and Africa data for solar irradiation are available on Photovoltaic Geographical Information System (PVGIS). There is an interactive map.
For solar spectral irradiance (W/m^2-nm), I use SMARTS from NREL: http://www.nrel.gov/rredc/smarts/. This is a command line program that generates a text file with the spectral irradiance depending on location, date/time, aerosol content of the atmosphere, etc. You may integrate the spectral irradiance for an integrated value.
For weather data, I have used the Global Hourly Data (legacy) from the National Climatic Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets These datasets are based on observations. Some are incomplete. I hope this helps.
I hope you are interested in having the information of Tamilnadu or may be in particular the data of "Vellore" city. If my guess is not wrong you can contact the "Meterological centre" Chennai and collect all the information.
Check out the following link: http://www.imdchennai.gov.in/climate/vellore2.htm
You can get average solar data from weather data bases or calculate it using equations. However it is recommended to have average temperature and wind data from Met station. good luck
Our team have made this type of data freely available via our API, its very easy! Get FREE access to solar radiation data for researchers like yourself via Solcast. Read more at:
If you are looking for Solar irradiance and wind speed data, it will depend on the particular location. For an example in india you may find this data at
We've already had 155 researchers and students from around the world register for FREE Solcast solar radiation data (Normal, Diffuse, Global): https://solcast.com.au/solar-data-api/free-solar-radiation-historical-and-forecasting-data-for-researchers/
In the PVGIS database, you will find hourly, daily and monthly data of solar radiation and temperature for the desired location. See the following link:
The NASA surface meteorology and solar energy (https://data.nasa.gov/Earth-Science/Surface-Meteorology-and-Solar-Energy/wn3p-qsan), and the NASA power data sets (https://power.larc.nasa.gov/) provide long term averaged values of many meteorological parameters.