This September, scientists and engineers from as far away as South Korea and as close as Boulder drove up South Table Mesa, on a dusty road President Jimmy Carter traveled decades ago, to the Solar Radiation Research Laboratory (SRRL) at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. Once at the SRRL, the researchers unpacked their telescope-like instruments, designed for measuring direct beam solar irradiance, and pointed them at the sun.
