The team of SGS Weather and Environmental Systems Private Ltd. (India), Geonica S.A. (Spain) and Hukseflux Thermal Sensors B.V. (The Netherlands) is chosen to supply measuring instruments and to install, commission and maintain a network of sixty measurement stations for solar radiation resource assessment in India. The network will be used by C-WET Centre for Wind Energy Technology, an autonomous R&D institution under the India Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.
The purpose of the network is to generate the “solar map” of India. Solar maps, showing expected yearly solar radiation levels, are used for design of solar power plants. Detailed historical data series are made available by C-WET as a commercial service.
The network continuously monitors and stores nationwide solar radiation and weather parameters and communicates these to a Central Receiving Station (CRS) located at C-WET Headquarters in Chennai. Each measurement station is equipped with high accuracy meteorological sensors. More specifically, every station includes a data logger / controller, a solar tracker and several solar radiation sensors; a pyranometer, a shaded pyranometer and a pyrheliometer. Data will be transferred via GPRS cellular network to the CRS for analysis and final archiving.