Weather based irradiance modeling of solar farms

The focus of this paper is on the development of a model to estimate solar irradiance at the Solar Strand, a 750 Kwatt rated solar farm. Using historical data provided by NOAA, the model is parameterized in terms of the time of day, cloud cover, and relative humidity. A polynomial model in terms of the three variables is used to estimate the transmittance of the atmosphere, which in turn provides the estimates of irradiance at the Solar Strand. Using data for the year 2013, the parameters of the model are identified and validated on data acquired for the first three months of 2014. Results of the model are encouraging providing motivation to carry out further studies on characterizing the uncertainties associated with the estimates.