4.4 Article

Global Horizontal Irradiance in West Africa: Evaluation of the WRF-Solar Model in Convection-Permitting Mode with Ground Measurements

Journal

JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY
Volume 62, Issue 7, Pages 835-851

Publisher

AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1175/JAMC-D-22-0186.1

Keywords

Africa; Shortwave radiation; Climate models; Renewable energy

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The study evaluates different shortwave radiation schemes from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model option Solar (WRF-Solar) for solar irradiance forecasting in Ghana and the southern part of Burkina Faso. The results show that the RRTMG_AERO_D01 scheme generally outperforms other schemes in simulating global horizontal irradiance under different weather conditions. It is recommended to use the RRTMG_AERO scheme for solar irradiance forecasts in the study area.
The number of solar power plants has increased in West Africa in recent years. Reliable reanalysis data and short-term forecasting of solar irradiance from numerical weather prediction models could provide an economic advantage for the planning and operation of solar power plants, especially in data-poor regions such as West Africa. This study presents a detailed assessment of different shortwave (SW) radiation schemes from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model option Solar (WRF-Solar), with appropriate configurations for different atmospheric conditions in Ghana and the southern part of Burkina Faso. We applied two 1-way nested domains (D1 = 15 km and D2 = 3 km) to investigate four different SW schemes, namely, the Community Atmosphere Model, Dudhia, RRTMG, Goddard, and RRTMG without aerosol and with aerosol inputs (RRTMG_AERO). The simulation results were validated using hourly measurements from different automatic weather stations established in the study region in recent years. The results show that the RRTMG_AERO_D01 generally outperforms the other SW radiation schemes to simulate global horizontal irradiance under all-sky condition [RMSE = 235 W m-2 (19%); MAE = 172 W m-2 (14%)] and also under cloudy skies. Moreover, RRTMG_AERO_D01 shows the best performance on a seasonal scale. Both the RRTMG_AERO and Dudhia experiments indicate a good performance under clear skies. However, the sensitivity study of different SW radiation schemes in the WRF-Solar model suggests that RRTMG_AERO gives better results. Therefore, it is recommended that it be used for solar irradiance forecasts over Ghana and the southern part of Burkina Faso.

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