Site Prospecting and Energy Forecast
Where to build a solar power plant? Which technology will have the lowest levelizedcost of energy (LCOE) and bring maximum return on investment (ROI)? What is theoptimal size of the power plant on a given site? Knowing the amount and distributionof solar irradiance with low uncertainties will help to answer such questions.
The amount of solar radiation available over time under the local environmental conditions is a key input for choosing the optimal location, technology and size of asolar energy project. Feasibility studies and technical due diligence calculations of a solar energy project always start with energy resource assessment.
High precision on-site measurements of solar radiation provide the lowest uncertaintyfor bankable data about the energy resource and the possible energy yield. Such measurements are performed by a high quality solar radiation monitoring stationthat measures all three components of solar radiation: direct normal irradiance
(DNI), di use horizontal irradiance (DHI) and global horizontal irradiance (GHI). Also,other meteorological parameters relevant to the project, such as air temperature,humidity, precipitation, wind speed and direction need to be monitored by adedicated weather station.
A complete solar monitoring station consists of a pyrheliometer mounted on anautomatic sun tracker for measurements of DNI, a shaded pyranometer for measurements of DHI and an unshaded pyranometer for measuring GHI; plus a high performance data logger to acquire and store the measured values.
Solar monitoring stations can be extended by spectral instruments and/or a skyradiometer to study the aerosol concentrations in the atmosphere, which is especially important in arid desert areas with high concentrations of sand and dust, in the air.
No comments:
Post a Comment