Solar modelling at a location in vicinity of hills/valley area - shading?

Hi all,

I'm using SAM to investigate solar installations at a town close to a hilly valley area.  Up to this point the projects I had carried out had been on a plain. Do I need to account for shading due to being close to a hilly area using shading, or does the solar radiation data already account for the variations due to terrains?

For your information I'm using solar radiation information request from the NSRDB.

From my understanding SAM's shading adjustments are more to do with near object shading - for things such as vegetation or buildings close to the solar installations, rather than the location being hilly.  Self-shading is also a different matter - it is more to do with the installation of the panels.

Thanks for your assistance in advance.

Hello,

The NSRDB data should account for the effect of hills and mountains on the horizon because the irradiance data is based on satellite imagery. However, each weather file for the United States is for a 4 kilometer grid cell (rectangle on the surface of the earth), so the data in won't represent variation within that area of land.

You can investigate how well this variation is represented by comparing results for different nearby locations, for example a hilltop location with a location in the bottom of a valley.

Best regards,
Paul.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the clarification.  I will investigate and compare the results with nearby locations but at a hill top as suggested.


Regards,

Joel