The Department of Energy and other entities are funding research to improve the accuracy of solar forecasting using high-resolution characterization and instrumentation of solar PV systems. Examine a high-fidelity distributed sensor network at The University of Texas at San Antonio. The system monitors solar irradiance, power quality, and weather information at a 1 s sampling rate and aggregates all data into a centralized data center. This real-time data is then processed, presented on a web page, and loaded into a solar array simulator tool that can model the output power.
Chris Fronda, VI Design Group, Inc., and Gerardo Trevino, University of Texas San Antonio
