EMS Annual Meeting Abstracts
Vol. 18, EMS2021-75, 2021, updated on 18 Apr 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-75
EMS Annual Meeting 2021
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Forecasting of solar irradiance and ramp events with all-sky imagers

Stavros-Andreas Logothetis1, Vasileios Salamalikis1, Stefan Wilbert2, Jan Remund3, Luis Zarzalejo4, Yu Xie5, Bijan Nouri2, Evangelos Ntavelis6, Julien Nou7, Lennard Visser8, Manajit Sengupta5, Mário Pó9, Remi Chauvin10, Stephane Grieu11, Wilfried Van Sark8, and Andreas Kazantzidis1
Stavros-Andreas Logothetis et al.
  • 1University of Patras, Laboratory of atmospheric physics, Physics, Greece (stavroslogothetis@gmail.com)
  • 2German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Solar Research, Almeria, Spain
  • 3Meteotest, Bern, Switzerland
  • 4CIEMAT Energy Department–Renewable Energy Division, Av. Complutense 40, 28040 Madrid, Spain
  • 5National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 1617 Cole Blvd, Golden, CO 80401, USA
  • 6CSEM Center Alpnach, 6055 Alpnach Dorf, Switzerland
  • 7PROMES-CNRS, Rambla de la thermodynamique, 66100 Perpignan, France
  • 8Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Netherlands
  • 9EKO INSTRUMENTS Europe B.V., 2521 AL Den Haag, Netherlands
  • 10PROMECA Ingénierie, 1 rue des Iles, 38420 Domène, France
  • 11PROMES Laboratory of Processes, Materials and Solar Energy, Rambla de la Thermodynamique, 66100 Perpignan, France

Cloud cameras (all sky imagers/ASIs) can be used for short-term (next 20 min) forecasts of solar irradiance. For this reason, several experimental and operational solutions emerged in the last decade with different approaches in terms of instrument types and forecast algorithms. Moreover, few commercial and semi-prototype systems are already available or being investigated. So far, the uncertainty of the predictions cannot be fully compared, as previously published tests were carried out during different periods and at different locations. In this study, the results from a benchmark exercise are presented in order to qualify the current ASI-based short-term forecasting solutions and examine their accuracy. This first comparative measurement campaign carried out as part of the IEA PVPS Task 16 (https://iea-pvps.org/research-tasks/solar-resource-for-high-penetration-and-large-scale-applications/). A 3-month observation campaign (from August to December 2019) took place at Plataforma Solar de Almeria of the Spanish research center CIEMAT including five different ASI systems and a network of high-quality measurements of solar irradiance and other atmospheric parameters. Forecasted time-series of global horizontal irradiance are compared with ground-based measurements and two persistence models to identify strengths and weaknesses of each approach and define best practices of ASI-based forecasts. The statistical analysis is divided into seven cloud classes to interpret the different cloud type effect on ASIs forecast accuracy. For every cloud cluster, at least three ASIs outperform persistence models, in terms of forecast error, highlighting their performance capabilities. The feasibility of ASIs on ramp event detection is also investigated, applying different approaches of ramp event prediction. The revealed findings are promising in terms of overall performance of ASIs as well as their forecasting capabilities in ramp detection.  

How to cite: Logothetis, S.-A., Salamalikis, V., Wilbert, S., Remund, J., Zarzalejo, L., Xie, Y., Nouri, B., Ntavelis, E., Nou, J., Visser, L., Sengupta, M., Pó, M., Chauvin, R., Grieu, S., Sark, W. V., and Kazantzidis, A.: Forecasting of solar irradiance and ramp events with all-sky imagers, EMS Annual Meeting 2021, online, 6–10 Sep 2021, EMS2021-75, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-75, 2021.

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