Implementing best practices for data quality assessment of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Solar Resource and Meteorological Assessment Project

Effective solar radiation measurements for research and economic analyses require a strict protocol for maintenance, calibration, and documentation to minimize station down-time and data corruption. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Concentrating Solar Power: Best Practices Handbook for the Collection and Use of Solar Resource Data includes guidelines for operating a solar measurement station. This paper describes a suite of automated and semi-automated routines based on the best practices handbook as developed for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Solar Resource and Meteorological Assessment Project. These routines allow efficient inspection and data flagging to alert operators of conditions that require immediate attention. Although the handbook is targeted for concentrating solar power applications, the quality-assessment procedures described are generic and should benefit many solar measurement applications. The routines use data in one-minute measurement resolution, as suggested by the handbook, but they could be modified for other time scales.