Benchmarking of Solar Irradiance Nowcast Performance Derived from All-Sky Imagers

Logothetis, Stavros-Andreas; Salamalikis, Vasileios; Wilbert, Stefan; Remund, Jan; Zarzalejo, Luis F.; Xie, Yu; Nouri, Bijan; Ntavelis, Evangelos; Nou, Julien; Hendrikx, Niels; Visser, Lennard; Sengupta, Manajit; Po, Mario; Chauvin, Remi; Grieu, Stephane; Blum, Niklas; van Sark, Wilfried; Kazantzidis, Andreas

doi:10.1016/j.renene.2022.08.127

Benchmarking of Solar Irradiance Nowcast Performance Derived from All-Sky Imagers

Journal Article · Sat Sep 03 04:00:00 EDT 2022 · Renewable Energy

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2022.08.127· OSTI ID:1890144

Logothetis, Stavros-Andreas; Salamalikis, Vasileios; Wilbert, Stefan; Remund, Jan; Zarzalejo, Luis F.; Xie, Yu; Nouri, Bijan; Ntavelis, Evangelos; Nou, Julien; Hendrikx, Niels; Visser, Lennard; ; Po, Mario; Chauvin, Remi; Grieu, Stephane; Blum, Niklas; van Sark, Wilfried; Kazantzidis, Andreas

Fluctuations of the incoming solar irradiance impact the power generation from photovoltaic and concentrating solar thermal power plants. Accurate solar nowcasting becomes necessary to detect these sudden changes of generated power and to provide the desired information for optimal exploitation of solar systems. In the framework of the International Energy Agency's Photovoltaic Power Systems Program Task 16, a benchmarking exercise has been conducted relying on a bouquet of solar nowcasting methodologies by all-sky imagers (ASI). In this paper, four ASI systems nowcast the Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) with a time forecast ranging from 1 to 20 min during 28 days with variable cloud conditions spanning from September to November 2019 in southern Spain. All ASIs demonstrated their ability to accurately nowcast GHI, with RMSE ranging from 6.9% to 18.1%. Under cloudy conditions, all ASIs' nowcasts outperform the persistence models. Under clear skies, three ASIs are better than persistence. Discrepancies in the observed nowcasting performance become larger at increasing forecast horizons. The findings of this study highlight the feasibility of ASIs to reliably nowcast GHI at different sky conditions, time intervals and horizons. Such nowcasts can be used either to estimate solar power at distant times or detect sudden GHI fluctuations.

Research Organization:: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)

DOE Contract Number:: AC36-08GO28308

OSTI ID:: 1890144

Report Number(s):: NREL/JA-5D00-84145; MainId:84918; UUID:f631e31a-885f-4648-8a87-ab969c7dd68b; MainAdminID:67641

Journal Information:: Renewable Energy, Journal Name: Renewable Energy Vol. 199

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Benchmarking of Solar Irradiance Nowcast Performance Derived from All-Sky Imagers

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