Weather Data from Meteonorm

[Natheera Ravat]

Hi

Could you kindly clarify on the Climate Data for PV Sol. If I select South Africa, Cape Town, the Time Period says 1961-1990. However Meteonorms website says that historical data is available in hourly values from 2010 to present. What climate period is actually used and if it is for 1961-1990 how was this data found? Would the simulation results not be a bit distorted if we don't consider recent years due to global warming? 

Thank you

[developer_mh]

Dear Natheera,

the climate data we use in PV*SOL is from Meteonorm, that is correct. The Meteonorm climate data are based on various sources of radiation measurements (ground stations, satellite) , with different time ranges (e.g. 1961 - 1990 or 1991 - 2010 and so on). The availability of climate dataset source varies from location to location. You can find more on that topic here in the manual of Meteonorm in Chapter 3.1:

https://meteonorm.com/assets/downloads/mn73_software.pdf

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However Meteonorms website says that historical data is available in hourly values from 2010 to present.

This information refers to a another type of product by Meteonorm, historical time series with one hour resolution. These are not climate data files which we normally use for simulation, as they are not representative.

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Would the simulation results not be a bit distorted if we don't consider recent years due to global warming? 

Generally it is advised to use the climate datasets with the most recent years that are available, that is correct. The availability of high quality long term measurements however is distributed very unevenly around the globe, however.

Hope that helps, kind regards,

Martin