Purdue University Meteorological Tool (PUMET) Date: 10/25/2017 Purdue University Meteorological Tool (PUMET) allows users to download and visualize a variety of global meteorological databases, such as the NASA meteorological database and National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) downloaded from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), etc. Through PUMET, users can access both the real-time and Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) data comprising irradiance, temperature, atmospheric properties, etc., across the entire world for different time resolutions (e.g., hourly, daily, monthly). This tool is developed by Binglin Zhao, Xingshu Sun, Mohammad Ryyan Khan, and Muhammad A. Alam at Purdue University. The authors acknowledge helpful discussion with Chris Deline from NREL and Josh Stein from Sandia National Laboratories. Original Databases: NASA database: https://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/sse/sse.cgi? NSRDB: https://nsrdb.nrel.gov/
1.0 Introduction to PUMET and the databases it interacts with Solar energy is one of the top runners among the renewable energy. The design and deployment of solar panels are geographic- and climate-specific to optimize the total energy yield. However, the existing meteorological databases are not accessible to users for direct download and visualization. Hence, we have developed a tool that allows users to download and visualize a variety of global meteorological databases, for instance, the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB). Enabled by our tool, Purdue University Meteorological Tool (PUMET), both historical and Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) data, such as solar irradiance and ambient temperature, across the entire world in specific time intervals and resolutions (e.g., hourly versus monthly) are available to the users. In PUMET, the user can choose meteorological databases with the specified time period (e.g., 2001 to 2012) at different geographical locations. The meteorological databases are originally provided by the NASA database [1]and NSRDB [2]. NASA database is a global satellite-derived database. It provides a monthly typical meteorological year data represent the past 22 years (from 1982-2004). We have downloaded and sorted the NASA database in our local server. Next, we generate hourly irradiance data including Direct Normal Incidence (DNI) and Diffuse Horizontal Irradiance (DHI) from the monthly Global Horizontal Irradiance based on the clear sky modeling method described in [3], [4]. NSRDB consists of four individual sub-databases Physical Solar Model (PSM), SUNY Semi- Empirical Model (SUNY), Meteorological Statistical Model1 (MTS1), Meteorological Statistical2 (MTS2). These four databases contain both real-time and TMY data sets, with different geographic coverages and time periods. We use API to download part of data based on the input parameters (year and location). After processing the data, we delete the raw data file and only save the post-process data. Those five databases have different attributes including year coverage, spatial coverage, temporal resolution, output parameters. This information is summarized in Table 1. Except for the NASA database, the rest databases from NSRDB only have different geographic coverage. Figure 1 summarizes the geographic coverage of NSRDB database.
Table 1: Details of the five databases. (GHI: Global Horizontal Irradiance, DNI: Direct Normal Irradiance, DHI: Diffusion Horizontal Irradiance.) Figure 1. Geographic Coverage of NSRDB.
(a) PSM (1998-2014)
(b) SUNY (2000-2014)
(c) MTS1(1961-1990)
(d) MTS2(1991-2005) For PSM, MTS2, and MTS1, the area spans from 25 W to175 W of longitude, and from -20 S and 60 N of latitude. For MTS1 and MTS2, location coordinates entered should be in the vicinity of the point on the map. For more detail, go to the website: https://nsrdb.nrel.gov/current-version 2.0 PUMET Input Parameter Database: Choose one of the databases NASA, PSM, SUNY, MTS1 and MTS2. See Table 1 for details. Data Type 1. Typical Meteorological Year (TMY): TMYs contain one-year hourly data that best represents weather conditions over a multi-year period. NASA database
itself is a TMY database since it only contains a one-year data averaged over 22 years. Hence, only TMY option is available to the users if the NASA database is chosen. 2. Real-Time data: For real-time data, the users can specify the time period. Note that real-time data is not available for the NASA database. Time Resolution: The users can choose data arranged either monthly, daily or hourly. Latitude: Enter latitude of the location. For north latitude, the value entered should be positive. For South longitude, the value entered should be negative. Refer Figure 1 for geographic coverage. Longitude: Enter longitude of location. For east longitude, the value entered should be positive. For West longitude, the value entered should be negative. Refer Figure 1 for geographic coverage. Start Year: Format: [yyyy] Enter the start year. *Different databases have different time coverage, see Table 1. End Year: Format: [yyyy] Enter the end year. *Different databases have different time coverage, see Table 1. Start Month: Format: [mm] Enter the start month from 1 to 12. Start Day: Format: [dd] Enter the start day. *Leap day is available. *Entered date should be valid for the selected month (e.g., April 31 st is invalid.) Start Hour Format: [hh] Enter the start hour from 0 to 23.
End Month Format: [mm] Enter the end month from 1 to 12. End Day Format: [dd] Enter the end day. *Entered date should be valid for the selected month. End Hour Format: [hh] Enter the end hour from 0 to 23. 3 PUMET Output Parameter The program produces a set of data specifically relevant for performance and reliability modeling of solar cells. These parameters are: Irradiance: Global Horizontal Irradiance, Direct Normal Irradiance, Diffusion Horizontal Irradiance Temperature: Ambient Temperature Solar Angle Data: Solar Zenith Angle, Solar Azimuth Angle Atmospheric Data: Dew Point, Relative Humidity, Pressure, Precipitable, Wind Speed, Wind Direction. The tool will visualize the output in plots. Note that each database can have a different set of outputs. Blank plots indicate the non-existence of data for the selected database. Data can be download using the download button. 4 Illustrative Example Let us says that the data we are interested in is available from PSM database. Let us use PUMET to calculate solar information for Chicago (41.87881N, 87.6289W) from 2014 January 1 st,00:00, to December1 st,00:00. Data selected to be arranged hourly.
Input & Output The input for the rappture tool The corresponding output (i.e., hourly irradiance data)
5 Reference [1] Surface meteorology and Solar Energy: A renewable energy resource web site (release 6.0), 2017. [Online]. Available: https://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/cgibin/sse/sse.cgi? [2] NREL. National Solar Radiation Data Base, 2010. [Online]. Available: http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/. [3] Khan MR, Hanna A, Sun X, Alam MA. Vertical bifacial solar farms: Physics, design, and global optimization, Appl. Energy, 2017, 206, 240 248. [4] Sun X, Khan MR, Deline C, Alam MA. Optimization and Performance of Bifacial Solar Modules: A Global Perspective, 2017.