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Assessing Climate Change impact on Solar Radiation and energy production

Considering the global energy context, it is of high interest to harness the indigenous renewable energy resources in each European region. Solar potential can be used for different applications as electricity or cooling generation. Depending on the solar irradiation received and other conditions as temperature in each location, the use of the solar energy potential, could be different. For this reason, it is crucial to have a good characterization of the solar resource, understanding the changes induced by climate change.

Weather is changing globally, and the effects of such changes are being received in a more accelerated and intensified way. Some places are suffering meteorological events, which are disruptive compared to the typical meteorological profile along the years. Among other climate phenomena, it is possible to perceive that some locations are receiving more solar radiation than it used to receive in the past.

The Climate Change will have an effect in the renewable energy resources and in the case of the solar radiation is one of the most perceptible as the number of sunny days per year has increased substantially in many places.

Different tools were developed to obtain a general idea of the radiation received at large scale but it is needed more accurate data to design solar installations in specific locations. On the other hand, the deployment of a network for measurement the solar radiation is an expensive task and time-consuming to gather a representative database. In this sense, it is important to combine different data sources and tools to be able to get valid information from the solar resource in a specific area.

During the last 15 years, FAEN (the Regional Energy Agency of Asturias) has been deploying a network for measuring solar parameters for energy applications and is working closely with CARTIF within the I-NERGY Project framework to obtain reliable predictions.

The use of analytic tools for the prediction of solar radiation is very useful to be applied in the energy planning both at public and private level. In the first case, public authorities will have a tool that helps to plan the energy mix within a short-term horizon (20 years) and to allow a better design of energy policies for a better allocation of public funds and aid programs. In the case of private stakeholders, companies and private individuals will also have access to a more reliable source of information conducting to a more accurate design of their installations considering the lifetime of solar installations (25 years in photovoltaic and more, in thermal solar installations).

Thus, considering the specificities of Asturias region with respect to Climate Change and associated impacts, a service to predict the solar radiation under different future scenarios is being developed. First, an analysis of the measured data at weather stations (13 meteorological stations in Asturias with historical data) was performed. Since the geographical distribution of the weather stations does not cover the entire region, other data sources are necessary to bias-adjust future data, although these data from weather stations are useful to validate and calibrate the results.

For the future solar radiation (under different climate change scenarios), CMIP6 data from the IPCC are being considered. The new IPCC scenarios that are running the CMIP6 model intercomparison project are a combination between SSPs (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways) and RCPs (Representative Concentration Pathways). RCPs were developed using Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) as input to wide range of climate model simulations to project their consequences for the climate system. These projections are used for impacts and adaptation assessment, representing different scenarios as per RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5.

With the objective of having a database of temperature and solar radiation data, an adjustment of the bias with historical data is performed for future data under two different scenarios: SSP245 and SSP585. Currently, the database is being populated with adjusted temperature and solar radiation data in the selected future scenarios. After that we will develop a model to interpolate (by slope, aspect or height) the obtained horizontal radiation data based on the day and the location. Finally, the developed forecasting service will integrate building boundaries for the estimation of PV production considering different building constraints. The results will be presented in a user-friendly and easy-to-use interface making possible to evaluate your own production scenarios.