Integrated Solar Radiation Data Sources over Australia

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CSIRO and its partners developed Australia’s first comprehensive solar radiation data set to help the solar energy industry measure and characertise the expected output of large scale solar power plants.Key resultsHigh standard solar radiation based tools for the solar industry require quality observation In principle a number of solar radiation data sources are available e.g. solar radiation collected for agriculture purposes. In practice, however, their quality is disparate. So although these data can be used, the effort required to quality control and assure them should not be underestimated.The dearth of quality direct beam (the direct normal irradiance, DNI) observations together with the higher complexity of these data, compared to the more standard global horizontal irradiance (GHI), have meant that more time had to be spent in cleaning and interpreting these direct beam data.The signing of the agreement between CSIRO and NREL, a subcontractor to CSIRO in the project, took much longer than anticipated. Such unexpected delay, due to the complexity of the two organisations involved, led to both lengthy negotiations and delays in the execution of the project.

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