Assessment and improvement of modeling the atmospheric attenuation based on aerosol optical depth information with applicability to solar tower plants

Abstract

Accurate modeling of atmospheric attenuation phenomena is a crucial aspect for the performance of solar tower plants. The development of suitable models requires of reliable measurements of the extinction coefficient near surface. Continuous monitoring of the extinction coefficient at ground is being recorded at Plataforma Solar de Almería (PSA) facility in south-east Spain since July 2017 offering a unique and long experimental database for model assessment. This work presents the assessment of Polo’s model with over two years of ground measurements. In addition, a new corrected and improved version of the model is presented here with a very good performance, maintaining the versatility of the model. Hourly estimations of the atmospheric attenuation at PSA with the new version of the model resulted in a 6.1% of RMSE and very good agreements in both inter- and intra-annual variability is found. The new model proposed here is easy to be used in both ray-tracing, optimization software and performance tools commonly and widely used for modeling solar tower plants behavior and production. This new model offers a better and novel approach that can be used at any site where AOD information is available.