Annual Report 2006 - Plataforma Solar de Almería

ENVIRONMENTAL APPLICATIONS OF SOLAR ENERGY
4.5 Characterization of Solar Radiation
In 2006, activities related to the study and characterization of Solar Radiation
concentrated on participation in projects related to:
• Measurement of solar radiation.
• Study of the spectral distribution of solar radiation
• Satellite imaging for calculating solar radiation
The most relevant actions in this line of activities are described below. Las
references and publications associated with this activity may be found in Section
4.6 [4.55 to 4.67].
4.5.1 Access to Ciemat Radiometric Information
This project, financed by the
ERDF, Spanish National RD&I Plan
and internal funding, responds to
the desire for on-line access to
quality solar radiation data, basically
for its use as energy in the
context of CIEMAT activities in
general and the PSA in particular.
The project began in 2001 and will
continue until 2010, depending on
the availability of funding for its
maintenance.
From 2001 to 2004, it mainly
concentrated on perfecting the
information to be distributed, basically
data from a new PSA radiometric
station (high quality
dating conforming to BSRN standards)
and solar radiation data
from satellite image treatment.
With all of the above, the Solar
Radiation Group at the PSA has
information from the following three sources available to it:
1) PSA BSRN Radiometric Station:
From 2001 to 2003:
Figure 4.17 Information available on the
web
• The best site and locations of structural components were chosen
• Instrumentation was chosen.
• The data acquisition system was configured
In 2004, the main action was related to designing the database and implementing
the tools for its use, and finally, in 2005, perfecting these tools
and implementing filters.
2006 was the first year the station was completely in service, although
there were some important incidents, such as lightning striking and leaving it
inoperable for several days.
2) Radiometric Station at the CEDER (Soria).
In 2005, information from this station was included in the data generated
by the Solar Radiation Group. Although it is not as completely instrumented,
it is completely autonomous, because it is configured with very robust com-
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