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History of the UO Solar Radiation Monitoring Laboratory Introduction Since 1977, the University of Oregon Solar Radiation Monitoring Laboratory (UO SRML) has operated a solar radiation monitoring network in the Pacific Northwest. The number of stations participating in the network has fluctuated over the years depending on the level of funding.
In 1994,
a consortium of utilities headed by the Eugene Water and Electric Board (EWEB)
initiated the Regional Solar Radiation Monitoring Project (RSRMP) which
revitalized the region's solar monitoring efforts. Current members of the
consortium are EWEB, Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Northwest Power Planning Council,
and Portland General Electric.
In 2000,
seed funding from Bonneville Power Administration allowed the UO SRML to
upgrade and expand the solar monitoring network, provide education and
training on solar resource assessment, and to become a regional solar
radiation data center.Background and early history In 1977, a five-station global network was established under the auspices of the Pacific Northwest Regional Commission. Formation of the network was motivated both by the lack of available solar radiation data around the region and by the large inaccuracies commonly found in older data, due to instrumental deficiencies and poor calibration procedures. These five stations were equipped with Schenk pyranometers and integrating chart recorders to facilitate hand analysis of the data. In preparation for the network, global monitoring was initiated at the Eugene station in 1975. EWEB has been a key backer of the solar monitoring effort from the beginning.
Supplemental
assistance for the UO solar radiation monitoring effort was provided
from 1977 to 1981 through a contract with the United Stated Department of
Energy, as part of the Solar Energy Meteorological Research and Training
Site Program (in collaboration with Oregon State University).
At about
the same time, in 1978, Bonneville funded the UO Solar Monitoring Laboratory
to initiate a program of high quality solar radiation data acquisition in
the Pacific Northwest. Both global and direct beam radiation were to be
monitored on a continuing basis so that short-term fluctuations could be
studied. The primary motivation was to provide the requisite resource
data base for future development of solar electricity in the region. Initially,
high quality monitoring stations were set up at three locations:
Eppley Normal
Incident Pyrheliometers mounted on trackers and Eppley
Precision Spectral
Pyranometers were installed at the stations. At the same time, the Eugene
station was upgraded to include beam radiation monitoring and an automatic
data acquisition system.
During 1980, a fourth Bonneville high
quality station was established at Kimberly, Idaho.
Another station at Vancouver,
Washington was started in October of the same year. The Vancouver
station was moved to Portland in 1983. In October 1985, the contract with
Bonneville was completed and the stations at Portland and Whitehorse Ranch,
Oregon and Kimberly, Idaho were decommissioned.
From September 1982 to August 1986 a
global and beam instrumented station was operated at
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho,
under the auspices of Washington Water Power (now Avista).
From April 1984 through August 1988,
solar radiation data was obtained for a station at Hood
River, Oregon
under contract with Pacific Power (now part of PacifiCorp). These solar
radiation data were used to calculate the energy savings for the Hood
River conservation project.
From 1988 to 1994, Burns, Eugene,
and—during much of the period—Hermiston were kept operating
with funds from EWEB and some supplies from NREL.Re-establishment of a regional network In July 1994, a consortium of regional utilities—Bonneville, EWEB, Idaho Power, PacifiCorp, and PGE—decided that a longer-term solar radiation data base was needed to make appropriate decisions on where and when to site solar electric generating facilitates. The UO Solar Monitoring Laboratory was contracted to gather and archive solar radiation data in the region. Instead of establishing all solar monitoring stations with expensive first class instrumentation, the utility consortium decided that a more comprehensive solar resource assessment could be achieved by maintaining a limited number of high quality, reference, solar monitoring stations supplemented by a number of less expensive and easier to maintain subsidiary solar monitoring stations. In this manner, the solar resource could be more thoroughly mapped, and areas with the greatest solar resource could be more quickly identified.
Several of the new network stations
are part of the US Bureau of Reclamation's AgriMet network. These
stations—Christmas Valley,
Hermiston, and Madras
in Oregon; and Parma, Picabo,
Twin Falls, and Boise in
Idaho—are equipped with one LI-COR
pyranometer for global measurements,
and a LI-COR pyranometer with a shadow band
for diffuse measurements. Except for
Boise, these are part of the AgriMet network. The new stations at
Bend, Oregon; Green River,
Wyoming; and Moab, Utah were part of PacifiCorp's PV monitoring
program and were equipped with Rotating Shadow Band
Pyranometers (RSPs). An RSP
measures global and diffuse irradiance and calculates the beam irradiance. In
addition, stations at Boise and Hermiston were equipped with RSPs for comparison
between different instrument packages. In 2000, two new stations equipped with
RSPs were established at Ashland, Oregon and
Cheney, Washington as part of the
network expansion.
In addition to funding solar radiation data
gathering, the contracts with our sponsors contain a limited amount of funding
to provide education and training on the use of solar radiation data. The
improved accessibility of the data, the resource assessment lessons, and the
tools contained at this web site are a direct result of this funding.
Continuation of these efforts depends on those agencies or companies that make
use of these data and services also joining the solar radiation data monitoring
consortium and become sponsors. © 2022, UO Solar Radiation Monitoring Laboratory. Last
revised: April 6, 2022.
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