The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) Solar Radiation Resource Assessment Project (SRRAP) is a broad‐based program involved in the collection, analysis, and dissemination of solar radiation data and related products for use by industry and energy analysts. One of SRRAP’s current major efforts is to complete a new national solar radiation data base to replace the earlier SOLMET/ERSATZ data. The new data base will contain hourly direct, diffuse, and global solar radiation data for about 50 measured and 200 modeled sites in the U.S. for the period 1961–1990. By combining this data base with other information, SRRAP will produce a number of solar resource assessment products over the next few years which will provide direct assistance to the solar community. This paper presents an overview of the data base and discusses the products anticipated from this activity.