Station close to Copiapó

[Luzdelnorte46]

Hi, I am monitoring the clouds over a 141 MW PV plant located 66 km north-east of Copiapó city, Atacama Region, Chile. What’s is the reference station for that location? Thanks

[idefix37]

@Luzdelnorte46
Normally selecting Reported wind or Reported temperature you see all weather stations in your area.
But it seems there is a bug as no weather station appears by this way near Copiapó. You find this weather station only in the search bar.

The reason is probably due to the fact there are no data provided by this station since Saturday 27 at 21h.

[Luzdelnorte46]

Thanks. It seems ti be a station at the University of Copiapó city. My plant is located closer to the Cordillera de Los Andes (Mountains) and it has a different weather than the Copiapó city most of the time. Is there a way to improve the forecasts of clouds for my specific location?

[idefix37]

@Luzdelnorte46
If you cannot rely on this weather station for cloud coverage, on Windy you find forecasts from ECMWF and from GFS models:
Clouds layer
As the effect on a PV solar plant depends probably on the clouds altitude:
High clouds layer
Medium clouds layer
Low clouds layer

Note that the density and altitude of clouds in Meteogram are not computed in the same way as the clouds layers.

And satellite observations in visible and infrared spectrum.
But I guess you already use them.

Then there is a Windy plugin (see Menu) which gives the Sun position at your location. Could be interesting ?

[Luzdelnorte46]

Hi, thanks for the details.

Yes, the effect on Solar plant depend on the altitude. The plant is located at almos 1800 msnm. (High).

I have been looking at the different clouds reports but they dont show a forecast (right?). So, I have been checking the satellite to see where the clouds are heading. For example, yesterday the forecast of GFS and ECMWF forecastes sunny (no clouds) and MeteoBlue forecastes some clouds during the morning, at the same time the satellite shows no clouds heading to Copiapó. But today we had more clouds than what we were expecting. You can check it searching for Copiapó. Out of the blue, a few small group of clouds comming from the ocean created a bunch of heavy clouds around Copiapó impacting my forecast. I dont know how forecast the clouds with more accuracy. If you have any idea please let me know.

The sun position can help me too. I will check the pulging.

Thanks,

Gabriel

[idefix37]

@Luzdelnorte46
Hi, there is a Sounding feature on Windy which could be interesting for you. It allows to get a profile of the atmosphere above your location as provided by ECMWF. Click the right button of your mouse to open it.
It shows 2 curves: the red one is the air temperature, the blue one the dew point. When the 2 curves are close together, there is a risk of clouds at this altitude (the water vapor condensates when the air temperature reaches the dew point). The profile changes when you move the timeline cursor.
So it's another way to estimate the risk of cloudiness. But I don't know if it brings really additional information compared to the Cloud layer as it comes from the same model forecast.