Reference · built on requestCommons signalAir, water & environment

NASA POWER

Solar radiation and meteorology by point or region from NASA's POWER project, hourly to climatology, as JSON, CSV, NetCDF, and ASCII.

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About

NASA's Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER) project at Langley Research Center serves solar and meteorological data for three communities: renewable energy (RE), sustainable buildings (SB), and agroclimatology (AG). Meteorology comes from the MERRA-2 assimilation model from 1981, with GEOS near-real-time products filling the gap to within days of the present; solar parameters come from satellite-derived radiation products such as CERES SYN1deg and FLASHFlux. Meteorology is served on a 0.5 by 0.625 degree grid and radiation on a 1 by 1 degree grid. The Temporal APIs return hourly, daily, monthly, and climatology values for a point or a bounding box. Application APIs build ASHRAE climate indicator reports, wind roses, and thermal zone results from the same data.

Through Fibric, an operator pulls the series for your sites and proposes changes, such as an expected solar yield or a revised start time, for your approval.

This is a reference listing. It documents what Fibric would read from NASA POWER and what it could propose, based on the publisher's published interfaces. Fibric builds it under a managed deployment when you request it; selecting it here installs nothing.

Inputs

  • Hourly point values through /api/temporal/hourly/point from 2001/01/01 to near real time, up to 15 parameters per request
  • Daily point and regional values through /api/temporal/daily/point and /regional from 1981/01/01, up to 20 parameters per point
  • Monthly values by year, and climatology averages, maxima, and minima, through the monthly and climatology Temporal APIs
  • Parameter names, units, definitions, and community availability from the Manager API at /api/system/manager/parameters
  • ASHRAE Climate Indicators, Windrose tables, and thermal moisture zones from the Application APIs
  • Output as JSON, CSV, ASCII, or NetCDF; EPW for the SB community on hourly, ICASA for AG on daily

Proposed actions

Read-only. This feed informs operators; it changes nothing.

Proposed actions are target capabilities. Every action runs propose-first and needs a validated deployment and the appropriate permissions.

What you can build

  • Check solar array yield against the sky

    The operator compares each array's metered output to POWER's daily all-sky irradiance for the site and proposes an inspection ticket when yield falls short without a weather cause.

    With Array Yield

  • Set optimal start from climatology

    Monthly climatology of temperature and humidity for each building sets the seasonal warm-up window the operator proposes, with the POWER series cited in the proposal.

    With Optimal Start

  • Separate weather from trend in demand

    Daily temperature and precipitation for each site are joined to the demand series so the outlook can tell weather from trend before it proposes a forecast change.

    With Demand Outlook

  • Put sites in different climates on one footing

    Degree days computed from POWER's daily temperature normalize each site's energy use before the benchmark proposes which sites to look at first.

    With Site Benchmark

Requirements

  • Site coordinates for point requests, or a bounding box for daily, monthly, and climatology regional requests
  • A community code (AG, RE, or SB) on every request, since parameter availability and some formats depend on it
  • Parameter codes from the Manager API, such as T2M or PRECTOTCORR, within the per-request cap
  • For wind at hub height, a wind-elevation between 10 m and 300 m and a matching wind-surface alias
Authentication
None is documented. Requests to power.larc.nasa.gov/api carry the community, parameters, location, dates, and format in the query string.

Limits

  • Hourly is point-only; regional requests exist for daily, monthly, and climatology and take one parameter
  • Values are grid cells, not station observations: 0.5 by 0.625 degree for meteorology and 1 by 1 degree for radiation
  • The archive is curated and not static; NASA replaces near-real-time meteorology with climate-quality products within two to three months
  • POWER answers 429 Too Many Requests under load and may block an application that keeps requesting the same location

Access and pricing

Reference listing. Public feed access is separate from Fibric integration. If you request this feed, your quote covers the build, usage, and support.

Request NASA POWER ↗

Questions and answers

How far back does POWER data go?
Daily meteorology from MERRA-2 starts 1981/01/01 and hourly series start 2001/01/01, both running to near real time. Recent months come from GEOS near-real-time products and are replaced by climate-quality data within two to three months.
Is there a request cap?
Yes. Hourly point requests take up to 15 parameters; daily, monthly, and climatology point requests take up to 20; regional requests take one. The API answers 429 when overloaded, and NASA says an application that persists in requesting the same location may be blocked.
What does NASA ask in return?
A citation. POWER asks publications to name the project, the service version, and the access date, and to notify larc-power-project@mail.nasa.gov when work using the data is published or the data is shared with other researchers.
Ask about NASA POWER

Ask about the capabilities and requirements in this listing.

For project-specific requirements, contact Fibric.

This Commons signal listing is developed, published, and supported by Fibric. It reads public data published by NASA Langley Research Center POWER Project (power.larc.nasa.gov). Upstream agencies and projects are the property of their respective owners, who are not affiliated with Fibric and do not sponsor or endorse this listing. Trademark policy