modelverse
← All data

Data / Solar Resource Atlas

Global ~1 km map of long-run mean solar PV capacity factor from the Global Solar Atlas (Solargis satellite irradiance), served interactively in Convexity for site screening and resource assessment.

License: CC BY 4.0
Open in Convexity

Overview

A global, high-resolution map of long-run solar resource: the mean capacity factor a typical PV system would achieve at every location, resolved to roughly 1 km. Where our historical solar capacity factors answer "what would this site have produced, hour by hour?", the atlas answers "where are the good sites?" with one number per location, comparable across regions because it comes from one dataset and one method.

Long-run mean solar capacity factor, converted from long-term PV yield. Source: Global Solar Atlas, served as published.

What's included

  • Mean solar PV capacity factor (0 to 1) at ~1 km resolution across global land
  • Interactive map layers and site-screening analytics in Convexity: area-weighted distributions, threshold filtering, exceedance curves and point inspection with percentile ranking

Where the data comes from

This is the Global Solar Atlas, the reference dataset for solar resource assessment, developed by Solargis for the World Bank Group. We serve it as it is published, with no re-modelling. Solargis derives PV output from decades of satellite-observed irradiance, resolving the geography that decides a site: terrain shading, coastal cloud gradients, altitude effects. The published long-term PV yield (kWh per kWp per day) is converted to a capacity factor, and Convexity adds the serving and the analytics: responsive map tiles at every zoom, and the screening tools listed above.

Get started in Convexity

The atlas is free to explore in Convexity, Bayesian Energy's energy-system modelling application:

  1. Sign in at convexity.bayesian.energy (free in the browser).
  2. Open any model's map, or create a new model to start from a blank map.
  3. Open the Renewables atlas panel from the right-hand edge of the map and switch to Solar.

Annotated view of the Renewables atlas panel in Convexity, with the capacity-factor layer painted over the map

  1. Renewables atlas tab: opens and closes the panel from the map's right edge.
  2. Wind / Solar switch: pick the layer; switch to Solar for this dataset.
  3. Summary statistics: mean, median, P10 and P90 capacity factor for the area in view.
  4. Area by capacity factor: drag across the histogram to filter the map to a capacity-factor band.
  5. Area at or above a threshold: how much of the view clears a given capacity factor.
  6. Mean capacity factor by latitude: the north-south profile of the view.
  7. Point inspection: type coordinates or pick a point to read its capacity factor and percentile rank within the view.
  8. Legend: the colour scale, stretched to the range of the data in view.

Coverage and caveats

Coverage is global land up to about 65°N, the northern limit of the Global Solar Atlas source data. The capacity factor is for a typical fixed-tilt PV system; a specific project's yield depends on its design. The atlas is a climatology: one long-run mean per location, intended for screening and comparison, not an hourly series (for that, use the historical solar capacity factors).

Source and attribution

The Global Solar Atlas (Solargis / World Bank Group / ESMAP) is released under CC BY 4.0. Bayesian Energy serves it in Convexity as published, converted to capacity factor, with interactive map serving and analytics on top. Free to use, including commercially, with attribution.