Characterizing local high-frequency solar variability for use in distribution studies

Abstract

Accurately representing the local solar variability at distribution timescales (30-seconds and shorter) is essential to modeling the impact of solar photovoltaics (PV) on distribution feeders. Previous works have examined variability at single locations, but this may not be useful to an operator whose distribution feeder is in a different climate region. In this work, we compare high-frequency variability from 8 locations in the United States. We define a variability metric for quantifying variability and use this metric to quantify and compare the variability at each of the 8 locations. We also explore the relationship between high-frequency and low-frequency (hourly) variability to see if widely-available low-frequency data (e.g., satellite data) may be used to determine variability climate zones. The end goal is to provide high-frequency solar inputs with climatologically representative solar variability for use in distribution studies.