Our aim is to determine the optimal placement of solar irradiance monitoring stations for renewable energy integration into electricity grids. Hourly SUNY satellite-derived irradiance over a rectangular grid of 34°to 44°N, 100°t o 110°W with a 0.1°resolution are used in this work. The variance quadtree algorithm is used to identify the regions with high spatio-temporal variations. The densities of monitoring stations over different regions therefore follow the empirical variation. The network

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... sign is compared to the results from the so-called "L-method". A discussion based on the network's predictive performance is also presented. We show that the unique design solution obtained using the L-method cannot capture the spatio-temporal variations embedded in irradiance random fields. A robust design should consider both the design requirements and functionalities of the monitoring network.