Estimating Hourly Profiles of Insolation based on Weekly Weather Forecast

In this paper, the authors present a simple procedure of estimating weekly profiles of insolation for photovoltaic (PV) power generation output of a roof-top PV system. The model is based on the historical data of solar insolation and weather conditions. Weather conditions are classified into representative patterns such as sunny, cloudy, and rainy, and corresponding hourly profile of insolation is obtained as the most likely values under each weather condition. The system uses the text weather forecast and the probability of precipitation information as input to obtain the estimated weekly profile of insolation. From the results presented here it is shown that such a simple profile can be useful for rating the storage batteries and scheduling electric vehicle charging to better utilize the PV-generated electricity.