Abstract
Annual solar irradiance anomalies (or departures from the long-term mean annual value) have a direct impact on various phases of solar energy projects, from prefeasibility studies to technical deployment decisions. Anomalies can happen because of normal climate variability or exceptional weather patterns. This study investigates such anomalies for both global horizontal irradiance (GHI) and direct normal irradiance (DNI) using Version 3 of the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB V3) and surface irradiance measurements at eight U.S. locations. At each site, the annual anomaly is analyzed here by evaluating the irradiance deviation from the long-term average for each specific year from 1998-2017. A positive/negative anomaly indicates that the solar resource was higher/lower than the long-term average during that specific year. The results show that in most cases the anomaly is within ±5% for GHI and ±10% for DNI using either ground-based irradiance measurements or modeled data from the NSRDB.
Original language | American English |
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Pages | 1947-1951 |
Number of pages | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 14 Jun 2020 |
Event | 47th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, PVSC 2020 - Calgary, Canada Duration: 15 Jun 2020 → 21 Aug 2020 |
Conference
Conference | 47th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, PVSC 2020 |
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Country/Territory | Canada |
City | Calgary |
Period | 15/06/20 → 21/08/20 |
Bibliographical note
See NREL/CP-5D00-76858 for preprintNREL Publication Number
- NREL/CP-5D00-79301
Keywords
- Anomaly
- DNI
- GHI
- PV Resource
- Solar Radiation