The ENEA, Italian National Agency for the new Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, a public body aimed at research, technological innovation and the provision of advanced services to enterprises, public administration and citizens in the sectors of energy, the environment and sustainable economic development. It is a public body aimed at research, technological innocation and the procision of advanced sercices controlled by the Ministriy of the Ecological Transition. For detailed information please refer to the official site.

ENEA è is engaged in an extensive program of development and experimental demonstration of the available and innovative technologies for the exploitation of solar energy, including

• the thermodynamic solar, which allows to obtain high temperature of heat transfer fluid through concentrating solar systems for the generation of electricity or the production of hydrogen;
• photovoltaics which directly allow the production of electricity using semiconductor materials;
• low temperature solar thermal for the production of hot water and for heating.

In support of research and development of solar technology, starting from 2006 ENEA has been carrying out an activity of characterization of the Italian territory for the purpose of identifying suitable sites for this technology. The activity tasks are the following:

• in the production of territory maps of ground solar radiation (global and direct; hourly, daily, monthly, annual, multi-year averages, etc .; horizontal, normal or on any oriented plan).
  The maps are currently produced with a spatial resolution of approximately 1 km x 1 km. Various algorithms are adopted in calculation which arrive at the estimation of the radiation starting from the cloud cover images acquired by the METEOSAT satellites of the EUMETSAT - European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.
• in the acquisition and processing of historical series of measurements carried out by the actinometric network of ENEA;
• in the development of procedures for forecasting the amount of radiation that will reach the ground starting from meteorological forecasts (for individual locations; time horizon: 1,2 days).

This site is dedicated in publication of produced data and the related documentation. Go to the site map to see the published content.

Among the available tools there are the procedures for the calculation of the monthly daily average of solar radiation (Rggmm), at the ground level and on any case oriented and tilted surfaces. This calculation is carried out in accordance with the provisions of the UNI 8477 standard containing instructions for the "Calculation of contributions for building applications. Evaluation of the radiant energy received", and is useful to all those (designers, operators, etc.) who are interested in solar energy systems, especially photovoltaics.

Radiation data and maps for Italian territory elaborated by ENEA since 1999 are available and free to download also from the Climatic Archive website.