Temporal-resolution cascade model for separation of 1-min beam and diffuse irradiance

Abstract

The procedure for splitting beam and diffuse components from the global radiation is known as separation modeling. Since the separation of irradiance components is required in a range of solar applications, hundreds of models with various complexities have been proposed in the literature. In this work, a new modeling philosophy, called the temporal-resolution cascade (TRC), is presented. The working principle of TRC models is to use low-resolution diffuse fraction estimates as input of a 1-min model. Based on a preliminary study, using two years (2019–2020) of data from seven locations, it is found that the TRC models are able to outperform most, if not all, existing separation models. All code and data are released for reproducibility.