Girasol, a Sky Imaging and Global Solar Irradiance Dataset

Abstract The energy available in a microgrid that is powered by solar energy is tightly related to the weather conditions at the moment of generation. A very short-term forecast of solar irradiance provides the microgrid with the capability of automatically controlling the dispatch of energy. We propose a dataset to forecast Global Solar Irradiance (GSI) using a data acquisition system (DAQ) that simultaneously records sky imaging and GSI measurements, with the objective of extracting features from clouds and use them to forecast the power produced by a Photovoltaic (PV) system. The DAQ system is nicknamed the Girasol Machine (Girasol means Sunflower in Spanish). The sky imaging system consists of a longwave infrared (IR) camera and a visible (VI) light camera with a fisheye lens attached to it. The cameras are installed inside a weatherproof enclosure that it is mounted on a solar tracker. The tracker updates its pan and tilt every second using a solar position algorithm to maintain the Sun in the center of the IR and VI images. A pyranometer is situated on a horizontal mount next to the DAQ system to measure GSI. The dataset, composed of IR images, VI images, GSI measurements, and the Sun’s positions, has been tagged with timestamps.