Solar radiation estimations over India using Meteosat satellite images

Abstract India is endowed with good solar energy resource due to its geographic position in the equatorial Sun Belt of the earth, but its atmosphere can have eventual large presence of aerosols with the subsequent negative feedback to the solar radiation available. Therefore, solar resource assessment studies over India are of high interest for potential solar energy applications. In this work daily estimations of global horizontal and direct normal irradiation are presented for six locations in India covering the years from 2000 till 2007. These computations have been performed with IrSOLaV/CIEMAT method for computing solar radiation components from Meteosat images with a spatial resolution of less than 5 × 5 km. A brief assessment exercise of the model output have been made with ground measurements available from the World Radiation Data Centre database, which consists only of daily sums of global horizontal irradiation. The daily global horizontal irradiation estimated by the model has shown a general positive bias with the ground measurements in the range of 5%, being the root mean square deviation around 12%, excepting for Trivandrum location where there are evidences of higher uncertainty in the ground measurements. In addition, the dynamical behavior of daily global irradiation is quite well reproduced by the model as a consequence of adding to the input the daily turbidity values estimated from MODIS Terra satellite information. Estimations of direct normal irradiation are also exposed but no assessment was made due to the lack of ground measurements. The importance and need of accurate daily aerosol data with high spatial resolution for solar radiation estimations is pointed out in this work.

[1]  M. Nunez,et al.  Development of a method for generating operational solar radiation maps from satellite data for a tropical environment , 2005 .

[2]  Larry Di Girolamo,et al.  A climatology of aerosol optical and microphysical properties over the Indian subcontinent from 9 years (2000–2008) of Multiangle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) data , 2010 .

[3]  Jesús Polo Martínez.  Optimización de modelos de estimación de la radiación solar a partir de imágenes de satélite , 2009 .

[4]  K. V. S. Badarinath,et al.  Variations in the aerosol optical properties and types over the tropical urban site of Hyderabad, India , 2009 .

[5]  Jesús Polo,et al.  A new statistical approach for deriving global solar radiation from satellite images , 2009 .

[6]  H. Guillard,et al.  A method for the determination of the global solar radiation from meteorological satellite data , 1986 .

[7]  P. Ineichen,et al.  A new operational model for satellite-derived irradiances: description and validation , 2002 .

[8]  R. Perez,et al.  Effective Accuracy of Satellite-Derived Hourly Irradiances , 1999 .

[9]  Ramesh P. Singh,et al.  Comparison of MODIS and AERONET derived aerosol optical depth over the Ganga Basin, India , 2005 .

[10]  Gregory G. Leptoukh,et al.  Online analysis enhances use of NASA Earth science data , 2007 .

[11]  Luis Fernando Peña Tirado.  Estimación de la irradiancia global horaria a partir de imágenes de satélite. Desarrollo de modelos empíricos , 2005 .

[12]  Atsumu Ohmura,et al.  Observed decadal variations in surface solar radiation and their causes , 2009 .

[13]  K. V. S. Badarinath,et al.  Long-range transport of dust aerosols over the Arabian Sea and Indian region — A case study using satellite data and ground-based measurements , 2010 .

[14]  P. Poggi,et al.  Correlations for direct normal and global horizontal irradiation on a French Mediterranean site , 1991 .

[15]  L. Zarzalejo,et al.  Estimation of daily Linke turbidity factor by using global irradiance measurements at solar noon , 2009 .

[16]  Larry L. Stowe,et al.  Reflectance characteristics of uniform Earth and cloud surfaces derived from NIMBUS‐7 ERB , 1984 .

[17]  Knut-Frode Dagestad,et al.  A modified algorithm for calculating the cloud index , 2007 .

[18]  Menas Kafatos,et al.  Aerosol and rainfall variability over the Indian monsoon region: distributions, trends and coupling , 2009 .

[19]  L. Wald,et al.  On the clear sky model of the ESRA — European Solar Radiation Atlas — with respect to the heliosat method , 2000 .

[20]  R. Kuhlemann,et al.  Rethinking satellite-based solar irradiance modelling: The SOLIS clear-sky module , 2004 .

[21]  Jesús Polo,et al.  Solar Radiation Derived from Satellite Images , 2008 .

[22]  Thomas Huld,et al.  Management and Exploitation of Solar Resource Knowledge , 2008 .

[23]  B. Goswami,et al.  Seminal role of clouds on solar dimming over the Indian monsoon region , 2010 .

[24]  C. Gautier,et al.  A Simple Physical Model to Estimate Incident Solar Radiation at the Surface from GOES Satellite Data , 1980 .

[25]  D. B. Jadhav,et al.  Observational evidence of solar dimming: Offsetting surface warming over India , 2007 .

[26]  K. Badarinath,et al.  Solar dimming over the tropical urban region of Hyderabad, India: Effect of increased cloudiness and increased anthropogenic aerosols , 2010 .

[27]  Shailesh Kumar Kharol,et al.  Case study of a dust storm over Hyderabad area, India: its impact on solar radiation using satellite data and ground measurements. , 2007, The Science of the total environment.

[28]  Richard Perez,et al.  VALIDATION OF THE SUNY SATELLITE MODEL IN A METEOSAT ENVIRONMENT , 2007 .

[29]  L. Wald,et al.  The method Heliosat-2 for deriving shortwave solar radiation from satellite images , 2004 .

[30]  V. Badescu.  Modeling Solar Radiation at the Earth’s Surface , 2008 .

[31]  C. Gueymard,et al.  GRIDDED AEROSOL DATA FOR IMPROVED DIRECT NORMAL IRRADIANCE MODELING: THE CASE OF INDIA , 2011 .

[32]  C. Schillings,et al.  Operational method for deriving high resolution direct normal irradiance from satellite data , 2004 .

[33]  R. Perez,et al.  Analysis of satellite derived beam and global solar radiation data , 2007 .

[34]  Martin Wild,et al.  Global dimming and brightening: A review , 2009 .

[35]  I. Vardavas,et al.  Assessment of the MODIS Collections C005 and C004 aerosol optical depth products over the Mediterranean basin , 2008 .

[36]  Pierre Ineichen,et al.  Conversion function between the Linke turbidity and the atmospheric water vapor and aerosol content , 2008 .