Modeling Solar Irradiance and Wind Speeds to Create an Accurate Resource Assessment for Renewable Energy

The increasing utilization of the wind and solar resource as an energy provider has created a need for accurate prediction of the potential at each potential generation site. In the present paper, we discuss a novel method to derive accurate solar irradiance estimations from numerical weather model variables, satellite data, and ground based observations sites. From the irradiance estimation a power prediction can be made for solar renewable energies, and in the present talk, we focus on solar PV. We show the results of a three-year data set for the period of 2006-2008. In addition to solar irradiance, wind speed and power estimations should be improved and we demonstrate a more sophisticated method to obtain a conversion from wind speed to power and illustrate the difference from the usual practice. These results are more accurate than their predecessors. The main results from the paper are wind speed, solar irradiance, wind power, and solar PV power estimation datasets for the years 2006-2008 for the US at 13-km resolution and the globe at 30-km resolution and images from this dataset will be shown.