I-Corps: A solar radiation and sky condition monitoring system

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to provide accurate measurements of solar radiation and sky condition for weather, climate, air quality, and solar energy applications. The I-Corps project enables accurate monitoring and understanding of the inherent variability of solar radiation due to cloud cover, aerosol loading, and other atmospheric gases that are essential for determining solar energy generation. The technology and associated data analytics enable solar energy producers, developers, distributors, and researchers to improve solar energy prediction, to enhance solar panel efficiency, to reduce operation and maintenance costs, and to potnetially increase the penetration of solar energy into the power grid.This I-Corps project will enable customer discovery for a core technology which integrates a multi-channel radiometer and a sky imager into a shadowband scanning smart system. This smart system measures spectral and angular solar radiation distribution and meteorological parameters for monitoring solar radiation and weather conditions. It also combines communication, computing, remote sensing, and advanced analytics, and responds to feedback from the prevailing environment to deliver improved accuracy and performance. Thereby, it represents a multi-fold improvement over existing methods/systems. This enables more accurate retrievals of optical properties of aerosol, cloud, ozone, and water vapor in the atmosphere. The proposed activities will advance science and technology in weather, climate, air quality, and solar energy.