Abstract
Through focused R&D efforts, favorable policies, and access to private capital financing, solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies have experienced phenomenal growth in the marketplace during the past three decades. During this time, the global installed capacity of PV has doubled every 3–4 years, so that at the time of this writing, global capacity is approaching 300 GW [1]. This growth is attributed to the positive feedback cycle of improved efficiencies and reliability resulting from public and private R&D investments, which brings down the commercial costs and promotes positive policy making to further expand markets and encourage new investments. One major factor in stimulating the growth of this key carbon-free technology has been the constant improvement in understanding of the solar resource available to these technologies. Solar resource availability and its characteristics are among the most important factors to be considered as further investments are contemplated. During the past three decades, as R&D in improving cell and panel efficiencies and reliability has paid dividends, so has the concurrent R&D in improving our understanding of the solar “fuel” available to these technologies. This understanding not only provides guidance on optimal sites for which to install systems but also on how to optimize the design and operation of systems at any site.
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Notes
- 1.
In some cases these instruments are referred to as rotating shadowband pyranometers (RSPs) or rotating shadowband irradiometers (RSIs) .
- 2.
In the USA, Sandia National Laboratories developed the original TMY data set in 1978. When NREL completed the NSRDB in the 1990s, a TMY data set was created out of this 30-year data set and designated as TMY2. An NSRDB update was produced that added in the years 1991–2005, and a new TMY data set was created, designated as TMY3, that makes use of the 1961–1990 data as well as the updated NSRDB data.
- 3.
We use P90 here as an example. Other exceedance probabilities, such as P70 and P95, are also of interest to certain project designers and financial organizations.
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Renné, D.S. (2017). Effective Solar Resource Methodologies for Sustainable PV Applications. In: Sayigh, A. (eds) Photovoltaics for Sustainable Electricity and Buildings. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39280-6_3
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