Since 2001, a photovoltaic station at MIT has been collecting, processing, displaying and archiving data about the weather in Cambridge and about the performance of the photovoltaic (pv) system itself. This "stand-alone" pv system includes a single module, rated at 60 watts and inclined at 60 degrees up from horizontal, batteries for energy storage, a micro-processor (in the grey box), and a radio transmitter for communicating data to a computer which, in turn, is connected to a server over the network. You are connected to this server.
Measures of ambient temperature, wind speed and wind direction are taken every two seconds. So too, measures of battery voltage and the pv module temperature. Data describing the performance of the module on the other hand, is taken every minute. Current, real-time data is available with a click of the mouse and in a machine-readable XML format. Archived data is available in text files by month. There is also a module which allows you to simulate the performance of a pv system of arbitrary load, battery capacity, and photovoltaic array size using the archived data for solar flux for any month you specify.
Note: Site under reconstruction.
