Girasol, a Sky Imaging and Global Solar Irradiance Dataset

TL;DR

This paper introduces Girasol, a comprehensive sky imaging and solar irradiance dataset collected with a specialized DAQ system, enabling improved short-term solar power forecasting for micro grids.

Contribution

The paper presents a new dataset combining sky images and solar measurements, along with a DAQ system that captures synchronized data for better solar irradiance prediction.

Findings

Dataset includes IR and visible images, GSI measurements, and Sun positions.

The DAQ system tracks the Sun to ensure accurate data collection.

Enables development of cloud-based solar forecasting models.

Abstract

The energy available in Micro Grid (MG) that is powered by solar energy is tightly related to the weather conditions in the moment of generation. Very short-term forecast of solar irradiance provides the MG with the capability of automatically controlling the dispatch of energy. We propose to achieve this using a data acquisition systems (DAQ) that simultaneously records sky imaging and Global Solar Irradiance (GSI) measurements, with the objective of extracting features from clouds and use them to forecast the power produced by a Photovoltaic (PV) system. The DAQ system is nicknamed as the \emph{Girasol Machine} (Girasol means Sunflower in Spanish). The sky imaging system consists of a longwave infrared (IR) camera and a visible (VI) light camera with a fisheye lens attached to it. The cameras are installed inside a weatherproof enclosure that it is mounted on an outdoor tracker. The tracker updates its pan an tilt every second using a solar position algorithm to maintain the Sun in the center of the IR and VI images. A pyranometer is situated on a horizontal support next to the DAQ system to measure GSI. The dataset, composed of IR images, VI images, GSI measurements, and the Sun's positions, has been tagged with timestamps.