Autonomous solar resourcing in China with Fengyun-2

Abstract

Almost all solar resource assessment and forecasting endeavors require gridded surface irradiance retrieved from geostationary satellites. China’s solar industry has hitherto been relying upon Himawari and Meteosat-derived surface irradiance products. Despite the maturity of those products, none provides a complete coverage of China, which implies a series of data issues, such as the inconsistency at product boundaries or limited resolution towards the edge of the field-of-view disks. However, data issues are but secondary, and the lack of autonomous capability of performing solar resourcing is what truly troubles those concerned. China’s latest geostationary weather satellite series, Fengyun-4 (FY-4), has the most advanced technology, but its service commenced only fairly recently in 2017. Hence, to meet China’s immediate needs for solar resources under its radical decarbonization target, which cannot afford to wait for FY-4 data to pile with time, soliciting information from its predecessor series, namely, FY-2, is thought to be apt. In this work, a high-resolution (1.25-km, 1-h) satellite-derived surface irradiance product (HelioFY2) over a twelve-year period (2011–2022) is developed, based on the scanning radiometers onboard FY-2E, −2F, and −2G satellites. A series of analysis as to quantifying the interannual and spatial variability of solar irradiance and assessing photovoltaic potential in China, which has rarely been done before, confirm that the current product can suffice most solar resourcing applications. This HelioFY2 product is profoundly beneficial to improving the status quo of solar resourcing in China. This new product is now available at https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.21884.