Services for Professionals in Solar Energy and Radiation

Education Service

The Education Service is a joint service of the servers SoDa and HelioClim. It proposes several lectures and tools about solar radiation, the usual quantities, their units and how to convert them, the course of the Sun in the sky, the climatology of solar radiation in Europe and the influence of the seasons and orography.
The Education Service is delivered by Centre Energétique et Procédés, Mines ParisTech / Armines, France.

Simulator of the position of the Sun in the sky	This Java applet draws the position of the Sun in the sky for each instant of a given day and a given latitude. Leave the mouse over the curve to obtain numerical values for elevation and azimuth. Time is the true solar time (zenith = 12 h).
Units	This page describes the units used in solar radiation of the International System and others. It offers means to convert from one unit to another.
Terminology	Definitions of the quantities used in solar radiation.
Meteosat Second Generation	The different generations of Meteosat satellites and their spatial and spectral characteristics.
Plane orientations and radiation components	Global, reflected, direct and diffuse components over a horizontal, tilted or normal (DNI) plane.
Lectures in climatology of the solar radiation in Europe	The solar radiation received at ground level is not uniform. It varies as a function of the season, the latitude and local effects, such as mountains or presence of the ocean. These pages describe these variations throughout the year and their causes for Europe and for the Mediterranean basin. Several exercises are proposed to better understand the course of the sun in the sky during the year.

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