The demands on the quality and contents of solar and meteorological data sets increase rapidly with the growth in Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) and other solar energy systems. This document is a delivera-ble of the SolarPACES Project: “Beyond TMY,” and it is produced as Recommendations for what to do next and a road map of future improvements in extension of our elaborate report: Discussion of currently used practices for: “Creation of Meteorological Data Sets for CSP/STE Performance Simulations”.
High quality ground-based measurements of global, direct and diffuse solar radiation are of fundamental importance. This includes the use of appropriate instruments, proper data quality control and gap-filling procedures, and improvements in satellite-derived data site-adapted with the ground-based measure-ments. Uncertainty assessments of both these data sources are essential. Furthermore, long-term solar resource scenarios and auxiliary meteorological data are important. These include the sunbeam shape, low level extinction and soiling. Reanalysis data from weather models and the prospects of realistic multi-year generation are all main topics that we summarize in this road map.
At the end of this document, a summary of Recommendations for future works it is proposed.
This roadmap aims to help non-experts in solar radiation or meteorological information in the under-standing of the current state of the art and the needed steps for the Creation of Advanced Meteorological Data Sets for CSP Performance Simulations.