The expert reports are based on SolarGIS time series of Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI) and Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) and other weather parameters (most often hourly data). Quality of the data involved is extensively validated in-house, and also by an independent expert study (by University of Geneva & International Energy Agency), which evaluates SolarGIS as the best performing database available on the market.

Solar Resource Assessment reports provide a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of the local climate from the viewpoint of CSP or CPV technology. The reports by GeoModel Solar are credited by the industry leading companies, which develop their CSP and CPV projects around the world.

You are welcome to download the full-text example of CSP report (PDF, 9.5 MB) for Upington solar park in South Africa.

Find more references on our work for CSP/CPV industry in Wrote about us section.

Benefits:
• Applicable for site assessment, engineering and design optimization
• Support to Due Diligence and financing
• Accompanied by consultancy, customised data products and maps
• All reports are bankable

A few categories of the reports are available:

Preliminary DNI and Climate Assesment Report

The report characterizes the solar resource and climate for a candidate site based on:
• Analysis of SolarGIS time series data, covering a history of 17 (12) years
• Data validation for the region of interest
• Critical comparison to other data sources
• Monthly statistics, interannual variability
• DNI uncertainty at 90% probability of exceedance P(90)

Supply of long-term time series of satellite-based solar resource data and meteorological data

Comprehensive knowledge about solar radiation since 1994 in 15-minute time-step (PRIME data region) or since 1999 in 30-minute time-step (IODC data region), respectively. Available values of:
• Direct normal irradiance, DNI [W/m²]
• Global horizontal irradiance, GHI [W/m²]
• Diffuse horizontal irradiance, DIF [W/m²]
• Irradiance quality flags
• Solar azimuth, SA and solar elevation, SE [°]

Comprehensive knowledge about other weather parameters for all period of time covered by solar data, calculated from the numerical weather model outputs supported by ground measurements. Available values of:
• Air temperature at 2 m, TEMP [°]
• Relative humidity, RH [%]
• Wind speed at 10 m, WS [m/s]
• Wind direction, WD [m/s]

Data are usually delivered as a list of values in ASCII, CSV or other digital format file, according the needs of customer.

Correlation of ground-measured DNI and GHI data with satellite-derived SolarGIS data

Satellite-derived databases are used to describe long-term solar resource for a specific site. However, their problem when compared to the ground measurements is higher bias and partial disagreement of frequency distribution functions, which may limit their potential to record the occurrence of extreme situations (e.g. very low atmospheric turbidity resulting in a high DNI). A solution is to correlate satellite-derived data with ground measurements to improve the accuracy of the resulting time series.

The SolarGIS satellite-derived data are correlated with ground measurement data with two objectives:
• improvement of the overall bias
• fit of the frequency distribution function

Optimally, high-quality ground measurements should be available for a period of at least 12 months, so that all seasons are included. In case of a tight time schedule, a shorter period may be considered for on-site measurements (half of year, several months).

Typical Meteorological Year (TMY)

The TMY is derived from the hourly time series covering years from 1994 to
Notice: Undefined variable: thisyear in /var/www/geomodel.eu/_en/reports/csp-cpv.php on line 94
-1. The TMY is constructed on the monthly basis, comparing months of individual years with long-term monthly characteristics: cumulative distribution function and mean. The selection of the most representative month takes into account different weights of Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI), Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) and Air Temperature (TEMP).

Relative Air Humidity (RH), Wind Speed (WS) and Wind Direction (WD) can be also included. These are parameters with lower accuracy and therefore they do not have weight in deciding about the choice of the representative month.

Site Assessment DNI Solar Resource Report

Long temporal coverage of historical solar resource data with validated quality and uncertainty provide a unique opportunity to develop a solar energy project at high level of confidence and at reduced financial risk. The report provides complete statistical analysis of the DNI solar resource as well as other meteo parameters in approximately 30-40 pages. Bankability is assured by validation information, uncertainty and statement of probabilities of exceedance.

Download the information leaflet (943 KB) about reports.
Contact GeoModel Solar for more information.

---