Solar Irradiance Measurements from Edinburg Texas Station

Solar irradiance measurements from a monitoring station at the University of Texas Panamerican in Edinburg, Texas. It tracks global horizontal, direct normal, and diffuse horizontal irradiance to quantify solar energy at this location.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between global horizontal and diffuse horizontal irradiance to model local atmospheric conditions.
• Compare direct normal irradiance measurements against solar calendar data to validate solar energy potential.
• Use irradiance data from the Edinburg station as input for renewable energy system performance simulations.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from a dedicated solar radiation lab with specific instrumentation like pyranometers and pyrheliometers.
• The dataset is licensed under CC-BY, allowing for flexible reuse and sharing.
• Tags indicate coverage of multiple irradiance components (global, direct, diffuse) for comprehensive solar energy assessment.

Limitations

• The specific data volume (rows), file size, and column structure are unknown, hindering initial assessment of analytical scope.
• Data is provided in HTML format, which is non-standard for numerical analysis and requires parsing to extract structured data.
• The geographic coverage is limited to a single station in Edinburg, Texas, limiting broader regional analysis.

Provenance

Source

Department of Energy

Collection Method

Collected by a solar radiation measurement station using instrumentation such as pyranometers and pyrheliometers.

Freshness

The dataset was last updated on March 21, 2026, indicating recent maintenance.

Geography

Edinburg, Texas, United States.