Welcome to this video on measuring solar irradiance.

By the end of this segment,

you should be able to describe how irradiance is measured, as well as visualize and
model irradiance and solar energy intensity. Let's begin with thinking about where
sunlight is on the Earth's surface. Well, we know that sunlight is subject to
absorption, scattering, and reflection. We know that it's also subject to the air
mass. Once we know all of those things, how do we actually begin to measure the
irradiance or intensity on the ground? Well, sunlight has been monitored for many
decades in the United States and around the globe, as stations where sunlight
measurements are continuously taken, usually part of larger weather stations. So,
they get dual use as part of meteorological data analysis as well. Irradiation
measurements are not needed at every location on the Earth's surface because solar
irradiation is regionally consistent. I mean that does not change on average for
about 100 to 200 kilometers or 60 or 120 miles or so. The data for monitoring
systems are used to predict future sunlight intensities, but they're also required
for tracking systems to be able to follow the sun in the sky. These data are used
to create maps, showing sunlight intensity across the US in the globe. This is one
example of a solar irradiation map for flat plate, south-facing latitude tilt
systems. What this means is there's no curve to the collector system. They're
facing due south and that the monitoring system is tilted at an angle equal to the
latitude at that location. So, a station in New York State might be at 42 degrees
tilt, but a station in San Diego, California might be at 32 degrees. This colormap
from NREL for the United States shows the highest sunlight energy in the Southwest
and where the least sunlight is in the Northeast and the Northwest. Energy levels
are shown as a daily average over the course of a year in units of kilowatt hours
per square meter per day. So, this connects back to our full sun hours as
essentially a measure of the sun hours per day. We can also improve performance
using a tracking system, which moves the collector throughout the day to always
receive direct irradiation. Looking at this map, we see dramatic increases in solar
irradiance in the Southwest. However, what's quite interesting is that the level
actually goes down significantly in the Northeast and the Northwest because
tracking favors direct to radiation. There are very few cloudy days in the
Southwest. So, there's more direct irradiance and the collectors can align directly
with the sun wherever it is in the sky. Under diffuse cloudy conditions, global
sunlight is dominated by the indirect factor and spread more evenly across the sky.
Angling the collector away from due south, actually limits the amount of available
indirect light and there's a negligible amount of direct sunlight that's available.
The maps generated by these monitoring systems help us to visualize average solar
energy levels. But we can also make spot measurements in the field. We might want
to do this because it helps us to evaluate photovoltaic system function if there's
any issues with the PV system. There are a few meters out there in the market. This
is an example of the Daystar brand meter. Their meters are calibrated to show solar
irradiance in units of watts per square meter. They're small, about the size of a
pocket calculator and they can be mounted in any direction to match the angle of
the solar collector and measure the intensity of sunlight. As a reminder, if you
can compare the watts of electricity coming out to the watts of the sunlight coming
in, we can get an overall efficiency of our system. This is something we discussed
how to do in the first course. In the next lesson though, we'll start to look at
how online resources can be used to get this irradiance data and correlate the
amount of sunlight intensity to where it is on the Earth's surface.