About the data
InfraMap keeps the hourly point weather at every wind and solar plant from 2010: hub-height wind, irradiance and temperature. NSRDB supplies historical solar irradiance, HRRR historical onshore wind where available, and ERA5 historical wind outside HRRR coverage. GOES satellite irradiance and HRRR 80 m wind cover 2026 and recent days.
The same inputs drive physical potential, expected generation and modeled curtailment.
NOAA’s Global Historical Climatology Network hourly gives temperature, dew point, humidity and wind at about 2,300 US airport stations. The analyst and MCP server read daily highs, lows and degree days by ISO and state, from equal-weighted airports.
- Served
- 2010 to October 2026, recent days every six hours
- Grain
- Hourly, at each wind and solar plant
- Airport weather
- About 2,300 US airport stations, 2010 on, updated daily
Access
Free with an InfraMap account. Create a free account.
Where it appears: Output tab, agent, MCP.
MCP tools that return it: get_plant_weather, explain_output_with_weather. The MCP server is part of Pro; setup is on MCP server.
Sources
- National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB)(opens in a new tab), National Laboratory of the Rockies, formerly NREL
- ERA5 reanalysis(opens in a new tab), ECMWF, Copernicus Climate Change Service; retrieved through the Open-Meteo archive API
- High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR)(opens in a new tab), NOAA, via AWS Open Data
- GOES-East and GOES-West shortwave radiation(opens in a new tab), NOAA, via AWS Open Data
- Global Historical Climatology Network hourly (GHCNh)(opens in a new tab), NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, via AWS Open Data
Periods and update notes for each source are on Data sources.
Known gaps
- NSRDB is served through 2025. ERA5 fills solar inputs where NSRDB is unavailable.
- Recent days use GOES irradiance and HRRR 80 m wind scaled to hub height, with roughly a three-hour source delay.
- Daily airport summaries by ISO and state weight every airport equally.
Missing values stay missing: a null means the source has no usable record, never zero. Zero and negative values are shown as reported.
How InfraMap uses it
How InfraMap joins, groups and calculates with this dataset is on Methodology.
Questions it answers
- What was the hourly hub-height wind speed at a given Iowa wind farm in the first week of March 2026?
- Did the weather explain low output at a given Texas solar plant in March 2026?
- How many heating degree days did PJM states have in January 2026?
Terms: Capacity factor.