Acoustic rates of excitation of solar p modes can be estimated from observations in order to place constraints on the modelling of the excitation process and the layers where it occurs in the star. For several reasons (including a poor signal to noise ratio and mode overlap), this estimation is difficult. In this work, we use three completely independent datasets to obtain robust estimates in the solar case for $\ell=1$ modes. We also show that the height in the solar atmosphere where the modes are observed must be taken into account. Our three sets of results are shown to be consistent, particularly in the lower part of the p-mode spectrum (from 1.8 mHz to 2.8 mHz). At higher frequencies, the agreement is not as good, because of a larger dispersion of the measurements and also because of some systematic differences which might be due to observation height estimation or to a systematic influence of the noise.