Solar and Meteorological Measurements from Colorado Test Facility

Loaded with high-quality solar resource and meteorological measurements from the SolarTAC test facility near Denver, Colorado. It was established by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in 2008 to support solar power project deployment and model development.

Use Cases

• Analyze solar resource assessment data to support the financing and design of large-scale solar power projects.
• Use meteorological measurements for the monitoring and performance validation of solar technologies tested at the 74-acre facility.
• Apply NREL's quality-assessed data for the development and calibration of solar irradiance and meteorological models.
• Correlate solar and weather data from the Aurora, Colorado site with power output data from technologies under test.

Strengths

• Data is from a high-quality measurement station established and maintained by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
• Supports deployment of power projects through a long-running collaboration launched in 2008.
• Provides research-quality data from a dedicated 74-acre outdoor test facility.

Limitations

• The specific data schema, including column names and row count, is not provided in the input.
• Geographic coverage is limited to a single site in Aurora, Colorado, near Denver International Airport.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Collection Method

Measurements collected from a dedicated solar and meteorological assessment station at the SolarTAC facility, with NREL responsible for instrumentation, calibration, data acquisition, and quality assessment.

Time Range

Station established in 2008; specific temporal coverage of the data is not provided.

Freshness

The dataset metadata was last updated in March 2026.

Geography

Solar Technology Acceleration Center (SolarTAC), a 74-acre site in Aurora, Colorado, USA, near Denver International Airport.