Solar Resource Compass

Solar Resource Compass

Accelerate solar project feasibility with trusted irradiance, albedo, and loss data.

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Solar Resource Compass - Free trial

Access a 30-day free trial with 15 site credits

Solar Resource Compass not only saves you time but also helps you maximize your investment by preventing unnecessary costs and ensuring accurate financial decisions.

Start free trial today!
Solar Resource Compass - API access

Are you looking for API access and custom integrations?

Gain deeper insights and minimize risk with Solar Resource Compass Advisor, featuring 20 hours of dedicated consultation from DNV engineers, along with API access and custom integrations.

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20000 +

Projects

100 GW

Capacity

Simplify solar modeling with trusted data and API integration

Solar Resource Compass not only saves you time but also helps you maximize your investment by preventing unnecessary costs and ensuring accurate financial decisions.


Get started with Solar Resource Compass today! Enjoy a 30-day free trial with 15 site credits and experience powerful solar data insights firsthand.

Overcome data discrepancies in solar irradiance estimates

Solar Resource Compass tackles the significant 10% variation often found between the highest and lowest solar irradiance estimates from free and paid data providers, as well as solar maps. By aggregating and comparing data from trusted sources for any project location, it reduces the risk of overestimating or underestimating energy potential. This streamlined approach ensures balanced, reliable assessments and empowers users to make confident, data-driven decisions for project feasibility.

Summary analytics and a monthly summary table, including

Median/average values and standard deviation, GHI, DHI, temperature, and wind speed

GHI comparison plots

to evaluate monthly consistency among datasources

Custom weather data uploads

including third-party purchased datasets

Quality checks

each data source to ensure consistency across parameters

Solar irradiance comparison at your fingertips

Solar Resource Compass aggregates data from trusted sources like Solcast (now part of DNV), Solargis, Meteonorm, PVGIS (with country-specific support), and NREL (including the PSM satellite model and the nearest TM2/TM3 locations), offering developers the tools to make well-informed decisions from the start. With instant and parallel statistical comparisons presented in user-friendly tables, charts, and maps, it ensures clarity and confidence for every project location maps.

Information about each source

including distance from site, grid size and elevation

API access

To all Solar Resource Compass data

Energy modeling

And terrain analysis via API

Consulting support and expert analysis

To assist with review of results and API integrations

Accurate soiling and snow loss estimates

Soiling and snow losses are often underestimated due to limited data, with snow causing significant winter losses and dust accumulation driving losses during dry periods. Solar Resource Compass addresses these issues by utilizing NOAA’s rainfall and snowfall data for North American projects and integrating Solcast data when NOAA data is unavailable. Leveraging the trusted Kimber soiling loss and Townsend snow loss models, the tool delivers accurate monthly soiling loss estimates. It also evaluates the impact of various PV module cleaning strategies, empowering users to optimize operations and maintenance decisions for maximum efficiency.

Monthly soiling

And snow loss profiles

Map-based view

To visualize station locations relative to your project

Store site locations

In project list to share with colleagues

Ground albedo for bifacial modules with indicative energy assessments in under 90 seconds

Solar Resource Compass offers valuable monthly albedo estimates for bifacial module modeling, incorporating factors like average snowfall and snow cover. Beyond providing accurate input estimates, it acts as a fast energy assessment tool by integrating with DNV’s SolarFarmer, delivering indicative energy estimates in less than 90 seconds. The tool provides developers and investors with the necessary albedo data, crucial for evaluating whether site conditions support optimal module performance. It ensures that the albedo data can be effectively used with software like SolarFarmer, PVsyst, and Helioscope.

Monthly albedo profiles

For acurate project modeling

PDF exports of results

To easy sharing with developers or investors

Hourly dataset downloads available in Excel

Fully compatible with PVsyst and SolarFarmer

Download

Solar irradiance data as TMY-file

Ørsted partners with DNV for production and financial modeling comparison for utility-scale solar 

Learn how Ørsted leveraged Solar Resource Compass Energy-Manual API to model annual and monthly production bias for a standardized utility-scale solar project using both TMY and time series data.

Solar Resource Compass API provides users with a powerful and flexible tool for a wide range of applications. It can handle both simple and complex energy calculations with ease and was a great platform for our research.

  • Clay Matheny
  • Energy Analyst
  • Ørsted

Pricing and plans (get started today)

Free trial

Recommended for first time users. Access to 30 sites.

15 credits for 30 days

Analyst

Recommended those who prefer user-friendly interfaces over programmable solutions for individual projects.

For more detailed information on pricing information and the limits that apply, please see our pricing package. Prices are shown in Euro and are subject to applicable tax.

Advisor

Highly recommended if you are looking for API or custom integrations of SRC with dedicated 20 hours consulting support by DNV engineers to review and discuss results and recommendations

For more detailed information on pricing information and the limits that apply, please see our pricing package. Prices are shown in Euro and are subject to applicable tax.

Start faster, achieve reliable results for individual projects, and save time with Solar Resource Compass Analyst.

Buy Analyst now >>

Trusted expertise backed by DNV’s global leadership

Built on DNV’s unmatchable expertise, Solar Resource Compass combines advanced analytics with trusted insights to de-risk solar project modeling. More than just a data aggregator, it’s a comprehensive solution designed to minimize uncertainty and optimize project outcomes. Trusted by DNV’s energy analysts, the tool delivers the same precision in irradiance data that financiers rely on, ensuring seamless alignment between project assumptions and financing standards.

 

Our team is always here to help you stay ahead as your needs evolve. 

Frequently Asked Questions

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Solar Resource Compass provides accurate solar irradiance, albedo, snow, and soiling loss data to optimize project decisions, reduce risk, and increase investment confidence. Try our API or web interface today
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Irradiance data is available from many sources, and none of the available sources is likely to be the most accurate at all project locations. NREL and other satellite data providers have published validation data that consistently shows that each model overestimates irradiance at some locations and underestimates it at other locations. We believe that project developers and financiers should evaluate multiple sources of irradiance to avoid selecting data that may be too high or too low for a given location. By providing the SunSpot data in a comparison table, we hope to increase awareness of the typical irradiance spread between sources.
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A typical year file is a synthesized year that is intended to represent typical conditions by combining the most typical January, the most typical February, etc. Each provider of TMY and TGY files will have a slightly different algorithm for making these determinations. Typical year data sets which consider a combination of irradiance and other weather data (such as temperature) are known as Typical Meteorological Years (TMY), whereas data sets for which the algorithm establishes "typicalness" based only on irradiance are known as Typical GHI Year (TGY) or Typical DNI Year (TDY) data sets.
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Solar Resource Compass aggregates data from trusted sources like Solcast (now part of DNV), Solargis, Meteonorm, PVGIS (with country-specific support), and NREL (including the PSM satellite model and the nearest TM2/TM3 locations), offering developers the tools to make well-informed decisions from the start.
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You can download a TMY/TGY file for each dataset shown in the comparison table. The data will be downloaded to your computer in a Pvsyst compatible data file.
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Please refer to our pricing page Solar Resource Compass | Veracity by DNV
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Yes, NREL TMY2/TMY3 and NSRDB (formerly PSM) data are available for free from NREL by visiting these links: TMY2, TMY3, NSRDB/PSM. Solar Resource Compass accesses this data, compares it to other data from for-fee data provides such as Meteonorm and DNV SunSpot.
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In general, DNV recommends that you evaluate at least 7 datasets, and select the median source after removing sources with data that don't appear to have the same seasonal consistency or may exist in a microclimate or climatically dissimilar location. Solar Resource Compass will automatically perform a check for seasonal consistency and highlight the median value (or source closest to the median).
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Solar Resource Compass implements the same analysis that DNV analysts perform when performing a solar resource assessment. DNV analysts will extend this by using the location data to evaluate potential climatic variations between sources, but for most projects where the data sources are climatically similar, Solar Resource Compass should provide the same recommendation as DNV solar resource comparison.
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Powered by DNV's Solcast, Solar Resource Compass now is available in Canada and Europe and will be expanding to other regions through 2025.
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You can contact our support team at src_support@dnv.com for technical and usage questions. For contracting questions, or questions related to billing and invoicing, please contact us at src_contracts@dnv.com.
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SunSpot has now been DNV's satellite derived irradiance model for North America. This model provides access to irradiance data - typical year data (TGY) and historical time-series at a 1 km resolution in 15-minute intervals. The model is a semi-empirical satellite to irradiance conversion model based on the Perez model and utilizes visible and infrared data to estimate terrestrial irradiance. SunSpot is currently available in the United States and southern Canada.

Relevant Resources

Explore Solar Resource Compass

Publications

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Product information

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