SolaRes by HYGEOS is the new operational service providing solar resource estimates aimed at solar power station operators worldwide. The SolaRes service was selected to participate to a Challenge organised by TotalEnergies.
During the competition, SolaRes provided: 1. the needed near real time constraints over the globe, 2. not only the Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) but also the direct and diffuse components separately, and even the Global Tilted Irradiance (GTI) when needed, at 1-minute resolution.
Off-line computations, compared with near-real time products by the other challengers, showed: 1. the best scores of SolaRes to reproduce the desert dust impact, and better performance ex-aequo with another challenger in the humid and cloudy conditions of the African tropical sea coast; 2. better performance by SolaRes over four European and African sites, with almost 60% success rate, in estimating daily solar resource with an accuracy better than 5%, at daily resolution; 3. no mean bias and 8% RMSD in comparison with observations made by TotalEnergies in variable all-sky conditions encountered in Europe and Africa.
Read the full report here.