![]() |
Acronymes and Useful Vocabulary |
A problem of units ? of terminology ? Consult the Education service. |
| Satellite | SoDa | Solar radiation Data. website / Service. |
| MSG | Meteosat Second Generation satellites. Images of origin of the data. | |
| IR | Infra Red | |
| WV | Water Vapor | |
| HC | HelioClim. Databases | |
| Radiation | au | Astronomical Unit: averaged sun-earth distance ≈ 149 597 871 km. |
| Esc | Solar Constant = 1367 W/m². Solar energy received by a surface normal to sun rays, located at the top of the atmosphere, and at a distance of 1 au. | |
| E0 | Extraterrestrial Irradiance on the normal plane. Solar energy received by a surface normal to sun rays, located at the top of the atmosphere at a given date. It is a function of Esc and of the instantaneous sun-earth distance. | |
| GHI | Global Horizontal Irradiation | |
| DNI | Direct Normal Incidence or Direct Normal Irradiation | |
| ToA | Top of Atmosphere. Solar radiation received by a horizontal surface located at the top of the atmosphere. | |
| Kt | Clearness Index = GHI/E0 | |
| Kc | Clearsky Index = GHI/GHIclearsky | |
| Kd | Kd = DHI/GHI | |
| TMY | Typical Mean Year: a one-year time series of hourly parameters (irradiation, temperature, wind speed...) which should be representative of the x years (x=10, 15, or 20 years...) of data available. | |
| P50 | Percentil 50%: for example, in a population of 100 people from 1 to 100 years old, and if George is 50 years old, he will be the percentil 50%, i.e. the person dividing the population of ages in two identical groups of 50 people. | |
| P90 | Percentil 90%: in the same example as above, if Jane is 10 years old, she will be the percentil 90 of this group since 90% of the people has more than 10 years old. | |
| Time | UT | Universal Time |
| TST | True Solar Time | |
| MST | Mean Solar Time | |
| - time step - frequency - summarization - period of observation - period of integration - duration of observation |
All these terms mean the time step of the retrieved data: monthly, daily, hourly or 15 minute data. | |
| Atmosphere | Tl | Linke Turbidity factor - parameter which gives an information on the nebulosity of the atmosphere |
| Tools | GIS | Geographical Information System |
| PVGIS | PhotoVoltaique Geographical Information System | |
| IT | Information Technology | |
| FAI | Fournisseur Accès Internet | |
| Organisations | OME | Opérateurs des Métiers de l'Environnement (Paris) |
| JRC | ||
| NOAA | ||
| NCEP | ||
| IEA | International Energy Agency | |
| GEO | ||
| GEOSS |


