An Evaluation of Satellite Estimates of Solar Surface Irradiance Using Ground Observations in San Antonio, Texas, USA

Estimates of solar irradiance at the earth’s surface from satellite observations are useful for planning both the deployment of distributed photovoltaic systems and their integration into electricity grids. In order to use surface solar irradiance from satellites for these purposes, validation of its accuracy against ground observations is needed. In this study, satellite estimates of surface solar irradiance from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) are compared with ground observations at two sites, namely the main campus of the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and the Alamo Solar Farm of San Antonio (ASF). The comparisons are done mostly on an hourly timescale, under different cloud conditions classified by cloud types and cloud layers, and at different solar zenith angle intervals. It is found that satellite estimates and ground observations of surface solar irradiance are significantly correlated (p < 0.05) under all sky conditions (r: 0.80 and 0.87 on an hourly timescale and 0.94 and 0.91 on a daily timescale, respectively for the UTSA and ASF sites); on the hourly timescale, the correlations are 0.77 and 0.86 under clear-sky conditions, and 0.74 and 0.84 under cloudy conditions, respectively for the UTSA and ASF sites, and mostly >0.60 under different cloud types and layers for both sites. The correlations under cloudy-sky conditions are mostly stronger than those under clear-sky conditions at different solar zenith angles. The correlation coefficients are mostly the smallest with solar zenith angle in the range of 75–90◦ under all sky, clear-sky and cloudy-sky conditions. At the ASF site, the overall bias of GOES surface solar irradiance is small (+1.77 Wm−2) under all sky while relatively larger under clear-sky (−22.29 Wm−2) and cloudy-sky (+40.31 Wm−2) conditions. The overall good agreement of the satellite estimates with the ground observations underscores the usefulness of the GOES surface solar irradiance estimates for solar energy studies in the San Antonio area.