Solar Radiation Measurements from a Historic HBCU Monitoring Network

Featuring 5-minute averaged measurements of direct normal, global, and diffuse horizontal solar irradiance from a six-station network. The network operated from July 1985 to December 1996, funded by the Department of Energy, to assess solar resources in the southeastern United States. Data from two stations, including Elizabeth City State University, were later integrated into the CONFRRM network.

Use Cases

• Analyze long-term trends in direct normal, global, and diffuse horizontal solar irradiance for solar resource assessment.
• Model atmospheric effects by correlating diffuse horizontal irradiance with other meteorological variables like humidity and pressure.
• Validate satellite-derived solar radiation estimates using ground-truth measurements from pyrheliometer and pyranometer instruments.
• Study the variability of solar irradiance in the southeastern United States using quality-assessed 5-minute data.

Strengths

• Provides over 11 years of continuous solar radiation data from July 1985 to December 1996.
• Includes three specific irradiance measurements: direct normal, global, and diffuse horizontal.
• Data underwent quality assessment processing by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
• Originates from a funded DOE project with a defined six-station monitoring network.

Limitations

• Data collection for the original HBCU network ended in 1996, making it temporally stale for current climate or solar modeling.
• The primary data format is HTML, which is non-standard for numerical analysis and requires parsing to extract tabular data.
• Sample data and specific column structures are unavailable, complicating initial data exploration and schema understanding.

Provenance

Source

Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Measurement & Instrumentation Data Center (MIDC).

Collection Method

Collected via a six-station solar radiation monitoring network using instruments like pyrheliometers and pyranometers, with data processed by NREL.

Time Range

July 1985 to December 1996.

Freshness

The dataset itself is historical; the metadata record was last updated in March 2026.

Geography

Southeastern United States, specifically including Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and other HBCU sites.