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Data Access Viewer (DAV) - Quick Start

NASA’s Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER) project provides free, globally available solar and meteorological data to support energy, buildings, and agricultural applications. The Data Access Viewer (DAV) is a powerful web tool that allows users to easily access and download this data. To request data using the DAV, follow the steps outlined in the video above and the list below.

Quick Start Steps

1) Select a Capability: The DAV offers options to access data at a single point, regionally, or globally; visualize and graph data; and view community-specific reports. Start by selecting from the options in the pane on the left.

2) Select a Community: Choose the community that best fits your needs, as this will determine the units for each parameter:

  • Renewable Energy (RE)
  • Sustainable Buildings (SB)
  • Agroclimatology (AG)

3) Select a Temporal Level: Choose the temporal level that best fits your needs:

  • Hourly
  • Daily
  • Monthly & Annual
  • Climatology

    This will determine the temporal averaging method of the datasets to be returned and will allow you to visualize and download data for the specified level.

4) Choose a Location: You can choose a location in two ways:

  • Click on the map for a single point location.
  • Manually enter latitude and longitude coordinates.

    Users can enter the latitude and longitude global coordinates in decimal degrees.

5) Set the Time Extent: Choose the start and end dates for your data. You can select any period, but the data will be returned based on the temporal level selected.

    Users must select a start and end date between 01/01/1981 and Near Real Time (NRT) to access data for the selected parameters.

6) Choose Parameters: After selecting a community, a list of parameters will appear that are specific to that community. You can select up to 20 parameters at once but depending on the date range and temporal level selected, you may be limited to a select number of parameters in a single request.

    Within the Advanced Parameter dropdown, you can toggle between time standards, wind elevation, wind surface, and pressure correction.

7) Download or Visualize Data: Choose from the dropdown the format you would like to download your data file in and select ‘Submit.’ If no download format is selected a line chart is shown for each parameter. Available formats include:

  • CSV
  • JSON
  • ASCII
  • NetCDF

    Users can download the files and interact with the charts as needed. Users can also access a request URL from the output pane to customize for your applications.

For a more detailed explanation of the steps, see the DAV User Guide.