Global Horizontal Irradiance and Meteorological Parameters Analysis for Modeling Effects of Cloud Motion on PV Generation

Efforts are exerted worldwide to increase the deployment of renewables specifically solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. One main challenge to face is the perturbation due to the fluctuating nature of the solar energy. The intermittency of the irradiance received by the solar PV systems is mainly caused by the cloud covering the PV system. In this paper a statistical analysis of the received Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) by a real PV plant as well as the meteorological conditions/parameters surrounding the PV arrays is performed. The results for the GHI analysis shows that the relative change of GHI over the period of the study is 70% or less for 63.32% of the time. Moreover, the GHI decay duration is equal to 20 seconds or less for 68.07% of the time for the study period. The meteorological data analyzed include the speed of the cloud, gust, number of clouds passing, width of the clouds, and the time interval between consecutive clouds. Detailed numeric results are obtained and depicted for these parameters over the time period set for the study. One objective of this study is to indicate and adjust the parameters that are to be fed to a Cloud Motion Simulator (CMS); which is a software that simulates the repeated passage of clouds over an electric power system model which includes interconnected PV.