Improvements in NOAA SURFRAD and ISIS sites for near real-time solar irradiance for verification of NWP solar forecasts for the DOE NOAA Solar Forecast Improvement Project (SFIP)

Abstract:

The DOE-NOAA Solar Forecasting Improvement Project’s (SFIP) main goal is to improve solar forecasting and thereby increase penetration of solar renewable energy on the electric grid. NOAA’s ISIS and SURFRAD network is part of this initiative by providing high quality solar irradiance measurements for verification of improvements in solar forecasting for the short-term, day ahead, and ramp events. There are 14 ISIS and SURFRAD stations across the continental United States. We will give an overview of recent improvements in the networks for this project. The NOAA SURFRAD team has three main components: 1) In addition to the existing stations, two mobile SURFRAD stations have been built and deployed for 1 year each at two separate solar utility plants. 2) NOAA SURFRAD/ISIS will update the communications at their sites to provide near real-time data for verification activities at the 14 sites. 3) Global horizontal irradiance (GHI), direct normal solar irradiance (DNI), and aerosol optical depth at various spatial and temporal averaging will be compared to forecasts from the 3-km High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) and an advanced version of the 13-km Rapid Refresh (RAP) models. We will explore statistical correlations between in-coming and out-going shortwave radiation and longwave radiation at the surface for specific meteorological regimes and how well these are captured by NWP models.