Has anyone tried using satellite-derived solar radiation in their weather files?
The bane of weather data over the past three decades has been the solar radiation (global horizontal and direct normal) which are not measured parameters, but derived using various solar and sky models. All the familiar "typical year" sets, i.e., TMY, WYEC, IWEC, etc. have modeled solar radiation.
For the past decade and a half, researchers around the world have been working to derive solar radiation from weather satellite imagery, driven largely by the needs of the solar power industry for the siting of solar power plants and getting "bankable" solar estimates for their arrays. Our little building energy simulation sector can of course benefit by hanging on the coattails of the solar power industry, but the downside has been to be totally priced out of the market, since the commercial cost for one year's solar data for one location (grid cell) typically runs around $1,000.
A welcome development over the last five years is that various government offices or affiliated consortia are now also beginning to provide public access to satellite-derived solar radiation under various conditions, such as NREL's National Solar Radiation Data Base (NSRDB) in the US, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) in Europe, the AMATERASS consortium in Japan, etc.
Has anyone tried to work with this source of solar radiation data, and if so, what have been your experiences?
Going to be picky here, but can you please modify your post to be an actual question, then add the rest as an answer? It is after all a Q&A site, not a Q or an A site :) (and it's perfectly ok to answer your own questions though).
Also a question of whether this is actually informative Q&A or pure commercial announcement can be asked (I personally won't), so please at least make sure you also add a disclaimer at the top of your answer saying you are the owner of WBT. Thanks!
I've recast my question and answer in the manner suggested. Thanks for the suggestion.
Much better, thanks for the edit Joe.