Models converting satellite images into the different radiation components become increasingly performing and give often better estimation of the solar irradiance availability than ground measurements if the station is not situated in the near vicinity of the application. Five different satellite products deriving both global and beam irradiance are validated against data from 23 ground sites. The main conclusions are: * the global irradiance is retrieved with a negligible bias and an average standard deviation around 16% for the best algorithm. For the beam irradiance, the bias is around several percents, and the standard deviation around 35%; * the main deviation comes from the knowledge of the aerosol optical depth; * the high latitude sites give not poorer results than the other sites, The interannual variability of the irradiance conditions, the lack of independent ground measurements such as aerosol data, the difficulty to assess the exact calibration of the ground data, and the choice of a specific year to carry out the validation, conduct to results that give good indications, but from which it is difficult to draw general conclusions.