Typical meteorological year (TMY) evaluation for power generation in Gran Canaria Island, Spain

Abstract

This paper analyses the suitability of V. Ruiz model for both, daily global solar irradiation and sunshine duration, to obtain TMY for the island of Gran Canaria. There are daily data available from seven measurement stations all around the Island between 1998 and 2008. The relevant climatic parameters evolution can be represented generating characteristic one year duration series provided by the TMY. This paper achieved the daily typical TMY of maximums, means, medians, variance and percentiles of 90% and 75% series of values. In order to improve the knowledge of solar intensities, it was obtained one TMY for each of those series using weight means to smooth the irregular data, by means of Henderson’s model. Finally, the TMY series were fitted to third grade Fourier series obtaining excellent results in all the locations around the Island. The irradiation daily data distribution is asymmetric, generally concentrated in the right side (high irradiation values are more frequent than low ones) so, in this paper, the real trend of the global irradiation behaviour in every location is represented by the Median TMY series. The numerical TMY series allow evaluating the possibilities of solar power generation in the measurement stations in Gran Canaria.