Computational Imaging for Long-Term Prediction of Solar Irradiance

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Julian, Leron, Lee, Haejoon, Kar, Soummya, Sankaranarayanan, Aswin C.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Julian, Leron
Lee, Haejoon
Kar, Soummya
Sankaranarayanan, Aswin C.
author_facet Julian, Leron
Lee, Haejoon
Kar, Soummya
Sankaranarayanan, Aswin C.
contents The occlusion of the sun by clouds is one of the primary sources of uncertainties in solar power generation, and is a factor that affects the wide-spread use of solar power as a primary energy source. Real-time forecasting of cloud movement and, as a result, solar irradiance is necessary to schedule and allocate energy across grid-connected photovoltaic systems. Previous works monitored cloud movement using wide-angle field of view imagery of the sky. However, such images have poor resolution for clouds that appear near the horizon, which reduces their effectiveness for long term prediction of solar occlusion. Specifically, to be able to predict occlusion of the sun over long time periods, clouds that are near the horizon need to be detected, and their velocities estimated precisely. To enable such a system, we design and deploy a catadioptric system that delivers wide-angle imagery with uniform spatial resolution of the sky over its field of view. To enable prediction over a longer time horizon, we design an algorithm that uses carefully selected spatio-temporal slices of the imagery using estimated wind direction and velocity as inputs. Using ray-tracing simulations as well as a real testbed deployed outdoors, we show that the system is capable of predicting solar occlusion as well as irradiance for tens of minutes in the future, which is an order of magnitude improvement over prior work.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_12016
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Computational Imaging for Long-Term Prediction of Solar Irradiance
Julian, Leron
Lee, Haejoon
Kar, Soummya
Sankaranarayanan, Aswin C.
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Image and Video Processing
The occlusion of the sun by clouds is one of the primary sources of uncertainties in solar power generation, and is a factor that affects the wide-spread use of solar power as a primary energy source. Real-time forecasting of cloud movement and, as a result, solar irradiance is necessary to schedule and allocate energy across grid-connected photovoltaic systems. Previous works monitored cloud movement using wide-angle field of view imagery of the sky. However, such images have poor resolution for clouds that appear near the horizon, which reduces their effectiveness for long term prediction of solar occlusion. Specifically, to be able to predict occlusion of the sun over long time periods, clouds that are near the horizon need to be detected, and their velocities estimated precisely. To enable such a system, we design and deploy a catadioptric system that delivers wide-angle imagery with uniform spatial resolution of the sky over its field of view. To enable prediction over a longer time horizon, we design an algorithm that uses carefully selected spatio-temporal slices of the imagery using estimated wind direction and velocity as inputs. Using ray-tracing simulations as well as a real testbed deployed outdoors, we show that the system is capable of predicting solar occlusion as well as irradiance for tens of minutes in the future, which is an order of magnitude improvement over prior work.
title Computational Imaging for Long-Term Prediction of Solar Irradiance
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Image and Video Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.12016