Solar Energy Mining: High-Resolution Meteosat-based Service for Solar Radiation Products for Europe, Africa and Asia

摘要

Solar Energy Mining (SOLEMI) is a new service set up by DLR (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt -German Aerospace Center) providing high-quality irradiance data for site evaluation, planing and financing purposes of solar energy systems. The service provides products with a resolution of up to 2.5 km resolution. Solar radiation maps and hourly time-series based on Meteosat full resolution data will be available for almost half of the Earth's surface (see Fig. 1): Meteosat Prime at 0° longitude will cover Europe, Brazil, Africa and the Middle East. Meteosat East at 63° over the Indian Ocean stretches across the Middle East and large parts of Asia, including such promising solar energy regions like India, Pakistan or China. Compared to other solar radiation data bases SOLEMI offers broader coverage, higher spatial and temporal resolution for the whole Meteosat area and for longer time spans. Especially for Africa and Asia no comparable data sets are available. The complete service receives continuous quality control ensuring highest data reliability. Fast access to the full field of view of Meteosat high resolution is also a novelty. Different to other schemes for derivation of solar radiation from Meteosat-data the cloud detection scheme applied for SOLEMI additionally to the visible channel makes use of the infrared channel. Through modelling of the daily variation of the background brightness temperature especially detection of thin cirrus clouds is improved and general cloud detection at low solar elevation. Fast access to the data is achieved by user-optimised storing of the data in a fully automated mass archive. The operational high performance computing environment DIMS (Data and Information Management System) at DLR-DFD (German Remote Sensing Data Center) allows for rapid processing and distribution of the products to the customers.