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Effect of Asynchronous Data Processing on Solar Irradiance and Clearness Index Estimation by Sky Imagery

  • SOLAR RADIATION AND ITS FORECASTING
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Abstract

Among the different available technologies to estimate and forecast solar irradiance, total sky imagers are a suitable option for short-term horizons (less than 30 min). For this purpose, cameras are able to capture images at high speed (less than a second), depending on hardware and configuration, while solarimetric measurements are restricted to the characteristic response time of pyranometers, that varies from 15–60 s, depending on its quality. This difference in sampling time may lead to asynchronous data logging. As a result, two data sets with different sampling time are obtained. A close look into specialized literature showed a lack of evidence on data synchronization of reported results. Thus, the existence of asynchronous data is a plausible assumption. The main objective of this study is to investigate the effect of considering two different approaches in which data can be treated for the estimation of the solar irradiance and clearness index. For this purpose, two data sets are available: solar irradiance with a sampling time of 1 min, and sky images taken at 5 s intervals. Image acquisition system is based on a fisheye camera and a cost-effective and portable device. In one approach solar irradiance is interpolated to image time, and in the second approach, extracted image data is interpolated to solar irradiance time. For each case, solar irradiance and clearness index estimation is based on a multiple linear regression with two different number of features extracted from sky image processing. To evaluate these models, the mean bias error, root mean square error and the mean absolute percentage error were used. Obtained results shows that using different approaches to process data of measurements may lead to errors of 6.2% for the solar irradiance and 3% for the clearness index.

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Funding

N. Herrera thanks the grant from CONACyT. M. Rivero and R. Loera acknowledge to CONACYT for the support provided through program “Cátedras CONACyT.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. TecNM/Instituto Tecnológico de La Laguna, Torreón, Coahuila, México

    N. Herrera & C. Alvarez

  2. Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores, Unidad Morelia – UNAM, Morelia, Michoacán, México

    S. Orozco

  3. Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales, Unidad Morelia – UNAM, Morelia, Michoacán, México

    M. Rivero

  4. CONACYT – TecNM/Instituto Tecnológico de La Laguna, Torreón, Coahuila, México

    M. Rivero & R. Loera

Authors
  1. N. Herrera
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  2. S. Orozco
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  3. M. Rivero
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  4. R. Loera
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  5. C. Alvarez
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Correspondence to M. Rivero.

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Herrera, N., Orozco, S., Rivero, M. et al. Effect of Asynchronous Data Processing on Solar Irradiance and Clearness Index Estimation by Sky Imagery. Appl. Sol. Energy 56, 508–516 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3103/S0003701X20060043

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3103/S0003701X20060043

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