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India launched Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission in 2009, which aims to set up 20 000 MW of grid connected solar power, besides 2 000 MW equivalent of off-grid applications and cumulative growth of solar thermal collector area to 20 million m 2 by 2022. Availability of reliable and accurate solar radiation data is crucial to achieve the targets. As a result of this initiative, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) of Government of India (GoI) has awarded a project to Centre for Wind Energy Technology (C-WET), Chennai in the year 2011 to set up 51 Solar Radiation Resource Assessment (SRRA) stations using the state-of-the-art equipment in various parts of the country, especially the sites with high potential for solar power. The GoI project has synergy with SolMap project, which is implemented by the Deutsche GesellschaftfürInternationaleZusammenarbeit (GIZ) in cooperation with the MNRE. SolMap project is contributing to SRRA project in establishing quality checks on the data obtained as per International protocols and helping data processing to generate investment grade data. The paper highlights the details of SRRA stations and an attempt has been made to present some of the important results of quality control and data analysis with respect to GHI and DNI. While our analysis of the data over one year finds that intensity and profile of the insolation are not uniform across the geographic regions, the variability in DNI is particularly high. Strong influence of monsoon is also identified. SRRA infrastructure aims to develop investment grade solar radiation resource information to assist project activities under the National Solar Mission of India.

The continuous and accurate monitoring of wind speed and direction is of utmost importance to weatherman, particularly during the cyclonic storms.  Wind monitoring also helps the meteorologists in tracking the cyclone accurately and estimating their devastating potential.  One major disadvantage of all the existing wind monitoring and storing systems is their huge consumption of power, and hence are not suitable during cyclonic storms due to mains power supply failure.  So an attempt has been made by the authors to design and develop a low cost, low power, more accurate and maintenance free High Wind Speed Recording (HWSR) System for the coastal meteorological observatories along the East and West Coasts of India. One such system after successful field trials have been installed at Meteorological Office, Puri in the Orissa coast, and 19 more stations are proposed along East and West Coasts of India. The system meets the operational accuracy requirements and vector averaging of wind data as recommended by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO, 1992). The system design aspects and scope for expansion have been presented in this paper.

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