Incorporating ground-measured pollution observations to improve temporally downscaled solar irradiance simulations

High temporal resolution modeling of solar irradiance is of great interest to stakeholders in the power sector and helps understand the impact of additional solar photovoltaic (PV) power on the grid. Recent developments in solar irradiance downscaling modeling (SID), such as the Bright model, have facilitated the generation of synthetic minutely solar irradiance and shown promising results in U.K. and the U.S. and Australia. However, in the presence of heavy airborne pollution, the SID performances may be hindered by a data shortage of high-temporal-resolution aerosol optical depth (AOD). In this paper, we present a novel approach to incorporate pollution effects into a solar irradiance downscaling model, i.e. the Bright model, by utilizing the local ground-measured pollution data that is publicly available. The proposed framework is evaluated through a case study in Beijing, China, and shows an improved estimation of high-frequency solar irradiance for areas experiencing heavy pollution.