Task Representative:
Dr. Manuel Silva, University of Seville, Spain
Task Participants:
Australia: BOM
Austria: BlueSky Wetteranalysen, ASIC
Canada: Environment Canada, CANMET
European Union / Italy: Joint Research Center (JRC)
France: EdM/Armines, LASH-ENTPE
Germany: DLR, Suntrace GmbH, Univ. of Applied Sciences Ulm, Univ. of Oldenburg (EHF)
Norway: University of Agder
Slovakia: GeoModel s.r.o.
Spain: CIEMAT, CENER, Univ. of Jaén, Univ. of Navarra
Switzerland: Meteotest, Univ. of Genève (UNIGE)
USA: NREL, NASA, SUNY
Subtasks and Working Groups
Beyond TMY Project
Meteorological Data Sets for CSP/STE Performance Simulations – Discussion of current practices (pdf)
Road Map for Creation of Advanced Meteorological Data Sets for CSP Performance Simulations (pdf)
Published Task Reports
Standardizing and Benchmarking of Model-Derived DNI-Products
Nature of Work and Objectives
The Task is a follow up of the earlier SHC-Task-36 named “Solar Resource Knowledge Management”. The title change reflects the changing priorities.
The task now focuses primarily on the two most important topics in the field of solar radiation for solar energy applications: For financing the bigger and bigger projects sound solar resource assessments are more and more important. And for operation of the many MW installed power forecasting of solar radiation is receiving high attention from plant and grid operators. In SolarPACES it remains as Task V, but with a new title. The scope of work of the task addresses several more solar resource topics even beyond solar forecasting and resource assessment. But many are related to the main topics. It covers satellite-derived solar resource products, ground-based solar measurements also covering topics not picked up in Task 36 like measuring circumsolar radiation.
The Task equally supports solar thermal heating and cooling, photovoltaics and concentrating solar power applications. However, for best serving the objectives of SolarPACES this report focuses on direct solar radiation, which can be concentrated.
The four objectives of this Task are:
Evaluate solar resource variability that impacts large penetrations of solar technologies;
Develop standardized and integrating procedures for data bankability;
Improve procedures for short-term solar resource forecasting;
Advance solar resource modeling procedures based on physical principles.
Achieving these objectives would reduce the cost of planning and deploying solar energy systems, improve efficiency of solar energy systems through more accurate and complete solar resource information, and increase the value of the solar energy produced by solar technologies.
The Task is now structured in four subtasks:
Subtask A: Solar Resource Applications for High Penetrations of Solar Technologies
Subtask B: Standardization and Integration Procedures for Data Bankability
Subtask C: Solar Irradiance Forecasting
Subtask D: Advanced Resource Modeling
More info on the task can be found here: http://task46.iea-shc.org/