SoDa: An irradiance-based synthetic solar data generation tool

Ignacio Losada Carreno, Raksha Ramakrishna, Anna Scaglione, Daniel Arnold, Ciaran Roberts, Sy Toan Ngo, Sean Peisert, David Pinney

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper, we present SoDa, an irradiance-based synthetic Solar Data generation tool to generate realistic sub-minute solar photovoltaic (PV) output power time series, that emulate the weather pattern for a certain geographical location. Our tool relies on the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) to obtain irradiance and weather data patterns for the site. Irradiance is mapped onto a PV model estimate of a solar plant's 30-min power output, based on the configuration of the panel. The working hypothesis to generate high-resolution (e.g. 1 second) solar data is that the conditional distribution of the time series of solar power output given the cloud density is the same for different locations. We therefore propose a stochastic model with a switching behavior due to different weather regimes as provided by the cloud type label in the NSRDB, and train our stochastic model parameters for the cloudy states on the high-resolution solar power measurements from a Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU). In the paper we introduce the stochastic model, and the methodology used for the training of its parameters. The numerical results show that our tool creates synthetic solar time series at high resolutions that are statistically representative of the measured solar power and illustrate how to make use of the tool to create synthetic data for arbitrary sites in the footprint covered by the NSRDB.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2020 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids, SmartGridComm 2020
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
ISBN (Electronic)9781728161273
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 11 2020
Event2020 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids, SmartGridComm 2020 - Tempe, United States
Duration: Nov 11 2020Nov 13 2020

Publication series

Name2020 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids, SmartGridComm 2020

Conference

Conference2020 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids, SmartGridComm 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityTempe
Period11/11/2011/13/20

Keywords

  • NSRDB
  • Solar PV data
  • Synthetic models

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Energy Engineering and Power Technology
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering
  • Control and Optimization

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