Downscaling of global solar irradiation in complex areas in R

A methodology for downscaling solar irradiation from satellite-derived databases is described using R software. Different packages such as raster, parallel, solaR, gstat, sp and rasterVis are considered in this study for improving solar resource estimation in areas with complex topography, in which downscaling is a very useful tool for reducing inherent deviations in satellite-derived irradiation databases, which lack of high global spatial resolution. A topographical analysis of horizon blocking and sky-view is developed with a digital elevation model to determine what fraction of hourly solar irradiation reaches the Earth’s surface. Eventually, kriging with external drift is applied for a better estimation of solar irradiation throughout the region analyzed including the use of local measurements. This methodology has been implemented as an example within the region of La Rioja in northern Spain. The mean absolute error found using the methodology proposed is 91.92 kWh/m2, vs. 172.62 kWh/m2 using the original satellite-derived database (a striking 46.75% lower). The code is freely available without restrictions for future replications or variations of the study at https://github.com/EDMANSolar/ downscaling.