Abstract

Interest in the large- and small-scale development of weather-driven renewable energy resources has grown rapidly in the past decade. So far, most of the commercial investments have been made in wind energy projects, but interest in solar energy is growing rapidly. To make informed decisions about these investments, there is a need for assessment information, which can be used to simulate project performance as a function of time and place. We have developed high-resolution wind and solar data sets based on a combination of in-house meso-scale numerical weather prediction simulations and satellite data analysis. Both datasets can be browsed in summary form through a web interface that uses the Google Maps API. This presentation focuses on the development and visualization of the solar radiation data set, which is based on an archive of geostationary satellite data, processed in-house to provide high-resolution cloud estimates and surface irradiance. The web site provides a convenient and effective method to explore the potential viability of renewable energy development.