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Joint Research Centre

Hourly radiation

In this tool you can get the full data set of solar radiation and other data needed to calculate PV power hour by hour for long time periods. PVGIS can also perform the hourly PV power calculation. The PV output values from the PVGIS interface "Hourly data" tool are calculated for a free-standing PV system. The hourly values of PV output from a building integrated system can be obtained using the Non-interactive service of the said "Hourly data" tool.

In this case the amount of data are so large that the only output option is to download the data in CSV or JSON format.

The tool can be accessed with:

Outputs

This option makes it possible to receive solar irradiance and PV output data for every hour in a multi-year period.

 

csv

The header consists of a few values:

  • Latitude (in decimal degrees)
  • Longitude (in decimal degrees)
  • Elevation (m)
  • Name of the solar radiation database used
  • Slope (inclination) angle for the fixed plane (in degrees)
  • Azimuth/orientation angle for the fixed plane (in degrees)

If the PV output calculation has been requested there will a some additional lines:

  • Nominal power of PV system and the type of PV technology used
  • System loss used for the calculation

These are then followed by one line of column headers, and then the hourly values of the following quantities, with each field in a separate column:

  • time [UTC]
  • P [W] - PV power output (if requested)
  • G(i) [W/m2] - Global in-plane irradiance (if radiation components are not requested
  • Gb(i) [W/m2] - Direct in-plane irradiance (if radiation components are requested)
  • Gd(i) [W/m2] - Diffuse in-plane irradiance (if radiation components are requested)
  • Gr(i) [W/m2] - Reflected in-plane irradiance (if radiation components are requested)
  • H_sun [°] - Sun height (elevation)
  • T2m [°C] - Air temperature
  • WS10m [m/s] - Wind speed at 10m

The last part of the output contains a list of descriptions of each column of data.

text

 

json

{ "inputs": { "location": { "latitude": 45.809, "longitude": 8.632, "elevation": 223 }, "meteo_data": { "radiation_db": "PVGIS-SARAH", "meteo_db": "ERA-Interim", "year_min": 2005, "year_max": 2016, "use_horizon": true, "horizon_db": "DEM-calcualted", }, "mounting_system": { "fixed": { "slope": { "value": 30, "optimal": False }, "azimuth": { "value": 0, "optimal": False }, "type": "free-standing", }, }, "pv_module": { "technology": "c-Si", "peak_power": 1, "system_loss": 14, }, }, "outputs": { "hourly": { { "time": "20050101:0000", "P": 0, "Gb(i)": 0, "Gd(i)": 0, "Gr(i)": 0, "H_sun": 0, "T2m": 4.49, "WS10m": 2.92, "Int": 0, }, {...} } }, "meta": { "inputs": { "location": { "description": "Selected location" "variables": { "latitude": { "description": "Latitude", "units": "decimal degrees" }, {...} } }, {...} }, "outputs": { "months_selected": { "type": "time series" "timestamp": "hourly averages" "variables": { "P": { "description": "PV system power", "units": "W" }, {...} }, {...} } } }