Calculate the average insolation (exposure to the sun) for any location in the world.
Used Data
The data is retrieved from NASA POWER Project Data Sets. Where POWER stands Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resources. It has solar and meteorological data sets for support of renewable energy, building energy efficiency and agricultural needs.
See: https://power.larc.nasa.gov/docs/v1/
The NASA API provides a lot of data. In this case the ALLSKY_SFC_SW_DWN is used. It means All Sky Insolation Incident on a Horizontal Surface. A value expressed in kW-hr/m^2/day.
Why
Sau Sheong Chang created a detailed blog post on the energy requirement of Singapore and how installing solar panels on all rooftops could help: https://medium.com/sausheong/estimate-the-solar-output-of-your-rooftop-with-google-maps-725e4f636f14
He calculated the average kW-hr/m^2/day for Singapore by hand. I was wondering what the value could be for other locations, so decided to create this simple tool for that.
Application
Given a latitude and longitude SunPower will calculate the average kW-hr/m^2/day for that location, where that average is based on all daily values over a period of the past ten years.
Install:
go install github/Gys/sunpower
Usage:
./sunpower 38.722501 -9.4323331
Same sample locations, calculated on Feb 7, 2020:
| location | latitude longitude | kW-hr/m^2/day |
|---|---|---|
| Stockholm | 59.326242 17.8419719 | 2.62 |
| Vancouver | 49.282730 -123.120735 | 3.11 |
| Singapore | 1.352083 103.819839 | 4.55 |
| Lisbon | 38.722501 -9.4323331 | 4.80 |
| Miami | 25.761681 -80.191788 | 5.01 |
| Abu Dhabi | 24.453884 54.377342 | 5.92 |