Solar resource assessment for PV applications

As many countries, France recently set up an incentive policy for the installation of grid-connected PV-systems. In this context, it becomes important for an investor to be able to calculate the kWh-production from a given system in a specific site. The national program, Performance PV France, gathers research laboratories and French industrials in order to improve the PV system models and the solar resources assessment. In order to evaluate a better method to monitor the solar resource for PV applications, three sites with different climates were selected. First two ones are located in the metropolitan France, Cadarache and Chambery, and they are respectively representative of the Mediterranean and the Alpine climates. The last one is situated in the Reunion Island coast (south part of Indian Ocean) and it is representative of the insular tropical climate. This monitoring will give a comparison between the solar irradiation measured on inclined planes by pyranometers and PV cells. The second goal of this measurement campaign is the improvement of translation models, from global horizontal irradiation to titled surfaces. In this paper we will present the experimental devices used to evaluate the solar resource with pyranometers and PV cells for 15 planes of different orientations.