The enerMENA meteorological network – Solar radiation measurements in the MENA region

Abstract

Abstract. For solar resource assessment of solar power plants and adjustment of satellite data, high accuracy measurement data of irradiance and ancillary meteorological data is needed. For the MENA region (Middle East and Northern Africa), which is of high importance for concentrating solar power applications, so far merely 2 publicly available ground measurement stations existed (BSRN network). This gap has been filled by ten stations in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan. In this publication the data quality is analyzed by evaluating data completeness and the cleanliness of irradiance sensors in comparison for all of the stations. The pyrheliometers have an average cleanliness of 99.2 % for week-daily cleaning. This is a 5 times higher effort than for Rotating Shadowband Irradiometer (RSI) stations which even have a slightly higher average cleanliness of 99.3 % for weekly cleaning. Furthermore, RSI stations show a data completeness of 99.4 % compared to 93.6 % at the stations equipped with thermal sensors. The results of this analysis are used to derive conclusions concerning instrument choice and are hence also applicable to other solar radiation measurements outside the enerMENA network. It turns out that RSIs are the more reliable and robust choice in cases of high soiling, rare station visits for cleaning and maintenance, as usual in desert sites. Furthermore, annual direct normal and global horizontal irradiation as well as average meteorological parameters are calculated for all of the stations.

Comparison of several satellite-derived databases of surface solar radiation against ground measurement in Morocco

“…These authors reported that re- Table 1. Instrument description and measured data for each station (from Schüler et al, 2016 analyses often exhibit cloudy conditions while actual conditions are cloud-free and vice versa. Satellite images are another means to getting a synoptic view of the SSI and may supplement radiometric measurements (Lefèvre et al, 2014;Wagner et al, 2012).…”

“…Three of these are dealt with hereafter: the HelioClim-3 databases (version 4 and version 5) and the CAMS Radiation Service (version 2), where CAMS stands for Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. Each database is available online and has more than several hundred users each year (Thomas et al, 2016a). Validations of each database are routinely performed and their results are published, thus supplying users with up to date knowledge of each database.…”

“…copernicus.eu/validation-supplementary-products (last access: 17 April 2018). Joint validations of the three databases have also been performed for various climates in Europe (Thomas et al, 2016b) and for more specific geographical regions, such as Brazil (Thomas et al, 2016a), Egypt (Eissa et al, 2015a), Oman (Marchand et al, 2017) and the tropical Atlantic Ocean (Trolliet et al, 2017).…”

Assessment of the erosion risk of sandstorms on solar energy technology at two sites in Morocco

“…3(a). The two stations belong to the enerMENA meteorological network [47,48]. Both site locations can be described as arid zones with poor vegetation.…”

Verification of sectoral cloud motion based direct normal irradiance nowcasting from satellite imagery

“…For this study and its year 2012, quality controlled data from two stations in Jordan and Tunisia operated by University of Jordan and Centre de Recherché et Technologies de l'énergie (CRTEn) were already available. Details describing all stations can be found in a separate SolarPaces 2015 paper [10].…”