Employment of a Weather Forecasting Model for Yield Photovoltaic Plants Optimization

The Solar energy is a renewable and clean alternative energy to the classical fossil fuels, as well as one of the energies in support of the so-called “green economy” of the modern society. It can be used through different technologies and for various purposes, even though it suffers from variation and intermittence of production, caused by the day-to-night cycles and weather conditions. The development of technologies that can make the use of solar energy economical is a very active research field. The PhotoVoltaic (PV) panels allow converting directly sunlight to electricity with a conversion efficiency of up to 32.5% in the laboratory cells. This paper shows the employment of a Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF), implemented and optimized for regions to complex orography. In the specific case, the results of forecasts of solar irradiation, cloudy coverage, temperatures and winds at 10 m, obtained by WRF model, allowed the optimization of the yield of the photovoltaic plant.