Historical and TMY data COMPARISONS

Compare Solcast historical and TMY products to Solargis, Meteonorm, Vaisala, and free data sources

HOW DOES SOLCAST COMPARE TO OTHER DATA SOURCES?

Solcast data was designed to be the most full-featured, most accurate source of irradiance and weather data for solar applications.

Paid alternatives to Solcast historical and TMY data including Solargis, SolarAnywhere, Meteonorm, 3E and Vaisala are generally harder to access and try, and less rich in API and data features. The alternatives are generally less accurate on most measures, and less comprehensively validated.

Free substitutes to Solcast including NREL NSRDB and PVGIS SARAH have data that is not bankable, ends more than two years ago, lacks many features, is not global in coverage and/or is not validated globally.

Read the Solcast Bankability Report published by DNV. Or use DNV Solar Resource Compass tool to instantly compare data sources and how they perform at your project sites.

Paid Sources Comparison

	Solcast	Solargis	Meteonorm	Valsala	SolarAnywhere
Free trial with instant access and data download?	 	 	 	 	 
Download wait time	1-3 seconds	5 minutes to 48 hours	30 seconds	5 minutes to 24 hours	5 minutes
Mean Bias Error (GHI)	0.33%	+0.3%	-0.67%	0.12%	0.01%
Standard Deviation of Bias (GHI)	± 2.47%	± 3.0%	± 6.99%	± 4.43%	± 2.13%
90% Bias uncertainty range	-3.74% to 4.40%	-4.7% to +5.3%	-12.17% to +10.83%	-6.5% to 7.1%	Insufficient validation sites
Mean Hourly RMSE (GHI)	15.99%	16.08%	17.80%	20.77%	20.60%
Comprehensive, global, independent validation	 	 	 	 	 
Validation Sites	207	228	85	196	54
Finest time resolution of satellite-based irradiance	5 minutes	15 minutes	60 minutes	10 minutes	5 minutes
Real time data available?	 	 	 	 	 
Excludes older, less reliable satellites	 	 	 	 	 

For more details, read the full comparison of Solcast against some commonly used datasets in the solar development community:

Free sources comparison

	Solcast	NREL NSRDB	PVGIS SARAH
Finest time resolution of real satellite-based irradiance	5 minutes	5 minutes	60 minutes
Latest data available	Real-time	Ends 2021	Ends 2020
Independently validated globally	 	 	 
Validated at 100+ sites globally	 	 	 
Largest validation study: # of sites	207	70	50
GHI Bias – Global Mean	0.33%	0.3%	0.7%
GHI Bias – Global Standard Deviation	± 2.47%	± 2.7%	± 3.2%
GHI Bias – 90% uncertainty range	-3.74% to 4.40%	Not reported	Not reported
GHI Hourly RMSE – Global Mean	15.99%	18.47%	19.6%
Excludes older, less reliable satellites	 	 	 

For more details, read the full comparison of Solcast against some commonly used free datasets in the solar development community:

Historical Time Series, TMY, Live, Forecast Data

Solar, Wind Market and Portfolios

Solar Resource Compass, SolarFarmer

Historical and TMY data COMPARISONS

HOW DOES SOLCAST COMPARE TO OTHER DATA SOURCES?

Paid Sources Comparison

Free sources comparison

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