Impacts of solar intermittency on future photovoltaic reliability

Jun Yin, Annalisa Molini and Amilcare Porporato ()
Additional contact information
Jun Yin: Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology
Annalisa Molini: Khalifa University of Science and Technology
Amilcare Porporato: Princeton University

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract As photovoltaic power is expanding rapidly worldwide, it is imperative to assess its promise under future climate scenarios. While a great deal of research has been devoted to trends in mean solar radiation, less attention has been paid to its intermittent character, a key challenge when compounded with uncertainties related to climate variability. Using both satellite data and climate model outputs, we characterize solar radiation intermittency to assess future photovoltaic reliability. We find that the relation between the future power supply and long-term mean solar radiation trends is spatially heterogeneous, showing power reliability is more sensitive to the fluctuations of mean solar radiation in hot arid regions. Our results highlight how reliability analysis must account simultaneously for the mean and intermittency of solar inputs when assessing the impacts of climate change on photovoltaics.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18602-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-18602-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18602-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().