Towards the Definition of Requirements for Direct Normal Irradiance Nowcasting Systems

Abstract

Prediction of direct solar irradiance within a forecast horizon of minutes up to some hours is gaining more and more interest in the scientific community since operation of solar concentrating power plants is expected to be improved by such kind of information. Within the European project DNICast (http://www.dnicast-project.net) methods for nowcasting the direct normal irradiance are developed based on different sources like satellite data, numerical weather models and all sky imagers. In order to provide the developers of the meteorological methods orientation on the functionality expected from such nowcasting systems, a list of technical applications where nowcasting systems could be valuable has been compiled within DNICast. This paper intends to bring the main results of this “specification work” to the scientific public. Further details are publically available from the project deliverable [1].