WRF-Solar global horizontal irradiance forecasts

Date(s) (Publication)
Distributor(s): Pedro Jimenez
Affiliation(s) 1 : National Center for Atmospheric Research Project Scientist
Version V 1.0
ID
Abstract Global horizontal irradiance (GHI) forecasts from the WRF-Solar model. Upgrades to the NCAR’s Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) community model have provided an appropriate numerical weather prediction framework for solar power forecasting. The augmentations introduced into WRF to create WRF-Solar have focused on improving the representation of the cloud-aerosol-radiation system (Jimenez et al. 2016a). The augmentations include a new aerosol parameterization that allows one to use observations from a variety of platforms such as surface stations, satellites, or even chemistry models to provide an accurate quantification of the aerosol attenuation (Ruiz-Arias et al. 2015). The aerosols also interact with the cloud microphysics (Thompson and Eidhammer 2014) modifying the cloud optical properties and the cloud life time and evolution. Another enhancement incorporates the radiative effects of unresolved clouds (Deng et al. 2014, jimenez et al. 2016b) which allows for a reduction of the grid spacing with the subsequent speed up of the forecast. Finally, A Fast All-sky Radiation Model for Solar applications (FARMS) to calculate surface irradiances every model time step (Xie et al. 2016). The WRF-Solar model is being run on an hourly basis providing a 6-hour forecasts over the contiguous U.S. Initial and boundary conditions are provided by the High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model. The forecasts files contain the instantaneous GHI every 15 min.

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Jimenez, P. A., J. P. Hacker, J. Dudhia, S. E. Haupt, J. A. Ruiz-Arias, C. A. Gueymard, G. Thompson, T. Eidhammer and A. Deng, 2016a: WRF-Solar: Description and Clear-Sky Assessment of an Augmented NWP Model for Solar Power Prediction. Bull. Amer. Met. Soc., 97, 1249-1264.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00279.1

Jimenez, P.A., S. Alessandrini, S.E. Haup, A. Deng, B. Kosovic, J.A. Lee and L. Delle Monache, 2016b: The role of unresolved clouds on short-range global horizontal irradiance predictability. Mon. Wea. Rev., 144, 3099 – 3017.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/MWR-D-16-0104.1

Ruiz-Arias, J.A., J. Dudhia and C. A. Gueymard, 2014: A simple parameterization of the short-wave aerosol optical properties for surface direct and diffuse irradiances assessment in a numerical weather model. Geosci., Model Devel., 7, 1159-1174.
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Xie, Yu, M. Sengupta, J. Dudhia, 2016: A Fast-sky Radiation model for Solar applications (FARMS): Algorithm and performance evaluation. Solar Energy, 135, 435-445.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038092X16301827
Keywords WRF-Solar, GHI, NASA, GOES-16, METAR, TDS, NetCDF, Contiguous U.S.A.
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Temporal Extent 2020-01-01 - 2021-01-31