Solar Energy
The solar energy community needs solar radiation data with a high spatial and temporal resolution. As the density of ground based stations measuring solar radiation is limited, an important task within radiation research at GFI is to enhance the amount of data.
Main content
Reliable data on the solar energy recourses, with a higher spatial and temporal resolution than given from the ground based stations is often needed. While most stations measures only the total solar radiation on a horisontal surface (global radiation), radiation on inclined surfaces (walls, windows, terrain etc) is frequently needed. Besides, for many purposes, not only the total radiation, but the radiation in different part of the solar spectrum is needed: illuminance and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) in the visible part and UltraViolet (UV) radiation. As some stations only have data on the time scale of one hour or longer, there is also a need for estimation of the variability on shorter time-scales, in some cases.
To cover this demand on more detailed solar radiation data, there is a focus on development and testing of models to produce these data. Much of the work in this field at GFI is done through international projects (examples):
International Energy Agency - Solar and Heating Programme (IEA-SHCP) projects:
EU-funded projects (for estimation of solar radiation at the ground from geostationary satellite measurements):
Models available for estimation of solar energy related parameters (developed and tested at GFI), are models to derive:
- solar radiation data at ground from satellite data. At the webpage of the project Satel-light 15-min solar radiation data are given for the 5-year period 1996 - 2000 for most parts of Europe. Examples of publications on this work are found here: paper1, paper2, paper3, paper4 .
- solar radiation data from surface observed cloud information: paper
- the diffuse fraction of solar radiation: paper1, paper2
- the solar radiation on inclined surfaces: paper1, paper2, paper3
- spectral distribution (illuminances, PAR, UV) of solar radiation: paper1, paper2, paper3, paper4
- short term variations of solar radiation: paper1, paper2
- variability of solar radiation in a complex terrain: paper1, paper2
For more information of the radiation modelling work at GFI, see here.
Contact at GFI: Jan Asle Olseth