Photovoltaic model UCRC-Solar becomes part of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF)
The photovoltaic model UCRC-Solar was developed by Jannik Heusinger together with Ashley Broadbent at Arizona State University and published in early 2020 in the journal Solar Energy (Heusinger et al. 2020). Ashley Broadbent recently joined the official WRF-Solar development team and has been assigned the task of integrating UCRC-Solar into WRF (personal communication, March 2020). WRF-Solar aims to simulate the absorption and scattering processes of solar radiation in the atmosphere as precisely as possible to provide an accurate estimate of the energy input at ground level. UCRC-Solar can be used here to better understand meteorological feedback processes and to simulate the energy production of individual PV panels.
The current version of UCRC-Solar has been evaluated and optimized for large scale PV systems. Further development to accurately simulate the energy balance of PV roof-top systems is currently taking place in the working group Climatology and Environmental Meteorology..
References:
Heusinger, J., Broadbent, A. M., Sailor, D. J., & Georgescu, M. (2020). Introduction, evaluation and application of an energy balance model for photovoltaic modules. Solar Energy, 195, 382-395.
Links:
https://ral.ucar.edu/projects/wrf-solar - Announcement under "Ongoing Developments