Comparison of Atacama Desert Solar Spectrum vs. ASTM G173-03 Reference Spectra for Solar Energy Applications
Abstract
Knowledge of the solar spectrum is essential for the design and study of numerous technologies based on the use of the solar resource. In spite of the fact that the Atacama Desert is in the spotlight of solar industry, there is not enough information about the spectral irradiance present on it. This fact and the special atmospheric conditions of Atacama cause an increasing interest of solar industry to know the spectral differences with other places of the world. Using a standard spectrum may represent very different results from the true. In this paper, direct and global tilted Atacama Desert Solar Spectra are derived from mean values of available satellite and model retrievals databases. Results are compared against the ASTM G173-03 Reference Spectra in order to know if the information provided by the standard is useful for solar energy applications. For that, solar spectra derived from SMARTS atmospheric transfer model in combination with the atmospheric information from the available databases are previously compared with several spectral irradiance measurements from the first spectral measurement campaign in Chile, developed on 2015. Later, the average of the atmospheric parameters for the whole Atacama Desert area is calculated from these data bases and is used to obtain the mean Global tilted Irradiance and Direct plus Circumsolar Irradiance solar spectrum.
Keywords
Spectral irradiance, Atacama desert, Atmospheric radiative transfer model, Solar energy