Benchmarking of Five Typical Meteorological Year Datasets Dedicated to Concentrated-PV Systems

Abstract

This paper presents the benchmarking of different Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) datasets applied to a Concentrated-PV (CPV) system. Using 18-years of high quality meteorological and pyranometric ground measurements, five types of TMY datasets were generated using variable time period and following different methods: the standard Sandia method or only considering the Direct Normal Irradiation (DNI) or a more sophisticated DNI-based driver considering the characteristics of the CPV system. The results show that the Sandia method is not suitable for CPV systems. The TMY datasets obtained using dedicated drivers are more representative to derive TMY datasets from limited long-term meteorological dataset.