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The demand for accurate solar irradiance nowcast increases together with the rapidly growing share of solar energy within our electricity grids. Intra-hour variabilities, mainly caused by clouds, have a significant impact on solar power plant dispatch and thus on electricity grids. All sky imager (ASI) based nowcasting systems, with a high temporal and spatial resolution, can provide irradiance nowcasts that can help to optimize CSP plant operation, solar power plant dispatch and grid operation. The radiative effect of clouds is highly variable and depends on micro- and macrophysical cloud properties. Frequently, nowcasting systems have to measure/estimate the radiative effect during complex multi-layer conditions with strong variations of the optical properties between individual clouds. We present a novel approach determining cloud transmittance from measurements or from correlations of transmittance with cloud height information. The cloud transmittance is measured by a pyrheliometer when shaded, as the ratio of shaded direct normal irradiance (DNI) and clear sky DNI. However, for most clouds, direct transmittance measurements are not available, as these clouds are not shading the used pyrheliometers. These clouds receive an estimated transmittance value based on (1) their height, (2) results of a probability analysis with historical cloud height and transmittance measurements as well as (3) recent transmittance measurements and their corresponding cloud height. Cloud heights are measured by a stereoscopic approach utilizing two ASIs. We discuss site dependencies of the presented transmittance estimation method and the potential integration of automatic cloud classification approaches. We validated the cloud transmittance estimation over two years (2016 and 2017) and compare the probabilistic cloud transmittance estimation approach with four simple approaches. The overall mean-absolute deviation (MAD) and root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) are 0.11 and 0.16 respectively for transmittance. The deviations are significantly lower for optically thick or thin clouds and larger for clouds with moderate transmittance between 0.18 and 0.585. Furthermore we validated the overall DNI forecast quality of the entire nowcasting system, using this transmittance estimation method, over the same data set with three spatially distributed pyrheliometers. Overall deviations of 13% and 21% are reached for the relative MAD and RMSD with a lead time of 10 min. The effects of the chosen data set on the validation results are demonstrated by means of the skill score.

Because of forward scattered radiation in the atmosphere, the circumsolar region closely surrounding the solar disk looks very bright. The radiation coming from this region, the circumsolar radiation, is in large part included in direct normal irradiance (DNI) measurements at the usual 2.5° pyrheliometer opening half angle, but only partially intercepted by the receivers of focusing solar collectors. Therefore, circumsolar radiation measurements are recommended to be included in solar resource assessment. Circumsolar radiation can be characterized using the radial angular distribution of the radiance around the center of the sun – the so-called sunshape. Several sunshape measurement methods have been developed recently. Most approaches use cameras or pyrheliometers with different apertures which require daily maintenance. The Rotating Shadowband Irradiometer (RSI) based method discussed here uses a conventional RSI without any hardware modification to enable sunshape measurements without affecting the RSI’s fundamental function as a DNI measurement device. Thus, it allows to measure circumsolar radiation without any additional hardware and with significantly lower maintenance requirements. The presented RSI-based sunshape measurement algorithm has been validated with four RSIs and more than two years of data. After a short description of the method to derive the circumsolar contribution, the validation results are shown. Then the required calibration method is discussed, followed by the results from the measurement campaigns at four sites in Spain, India and Morocco. It was found that no individual calibration is required per instrument and the algorithm can be used for automatic data processing so that common RSI stations can measure the sunshape with comparably low extra effort. Furthermore, we explain how to derive sunshapes from the RSI measurements.

Hochpräzise Messungen der solaren Direktstrahlung sind für Anwendungen der konzentrierenden Solartechnik eminent wichtig: Bei Wirkungsgradmessungen können Messungen in Standardpräzision bis zu 80% der Messun-sicherheit ausmachen beziehungsweise für eine Standortevaluierung unter Verwendung einer nicht angemesse-nen Messausrüstung leicht zu Fehlentscheidungen führen, die Kosten in die Höhe treiben oder erfolgversprechende Projekte verhindern. Deshalb wurde am DLR eine entsprechend hochpräzise Messausrüstung angeschafft und adäquate Sensoren zur Standortevaluierung getestet und qualifiziert.