REMOTELY SENSING THE SURFACE TEMPERATURES OF SOLAR FARMS
Rob Banks GPH909 Fall 2016
Remote sensing is.....
...looking at the earth's surface closely from far away.
There is a growing number of satellite platforms that can be used to remotely sense the earth's surface. Ranging from the 10cm wide microsatellite CubeSat up to LandSat satellites that are meters across. The following list is a sample of the platforms that are collecting data (click the links to learn more about each of them)
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The myriad of satellites and sensors that are out there may be focused on specialized uses, while other sensors are multipurpose and found on multiple platforms as well.
Some of these satellites are gathering data for public consumption while others, like CubeSat, are more privatized data capture.
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There are web based repositories where imagery can be downloaded for your own use:
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The USGS offers many LandSat products here: USGS Earth Explorer & USGS GloVis: The Global Visualization Viewer
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Sentinel captured data is available: Sentinels Scientific Data Hub
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MODIS & ASTER imagery is available from The USGS LP DAAC website and from the USGS GloVis site
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Satellites and Data
What we refer to as remote sensing is nothing new, in fact people have been doing it for a long time. It can be as simple as a photograph taken from a drone, to cameras on a NASA Space Shuttle to an array of multispectral sensors mounted on a satellite. Some sensors are designed to be used to watch the oceans, while others are focused on land; some keep an eye on the ice caps and some are global sentries observing everything below them.
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What carries those sensors is also changing. Early on you found balloons and kites lifting cameras up in the air, then as humans learned how to fly by plane and then higher still the sensors were able to be lifted out into space;
but still looking back at earth.
Of course what we want to look at changes all of the time and people are very innovative so remote sensing sensors are starting to appear on remote controlled drones that are great for using at specific places and locations without the cost of a satellite or hiring a plane.
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There are a many applications for the field of remote sensing, studying the surface temperature is just one small use. Here is a great list of 100 uses of remote sensing applications (updated June, 2016) some might surprise you.
The US Government's Landsat platforms was used to gather data
The Landsat 4,5,7 and 8 platforms sensor capture visible, and invisible light to assemble pictures that people who study remote sensing can use. In the case of looking at the surface temperature of the ground we need to use data that is captured in the 10.40-12.50µm wavelength that can be converted to temperature. As temperature is not a light source, researchers use the Infrared light that is reflected back to the sensor; this is referred to as the "Radiance" of the surface. With known values that radiance is able to be calculated by a computer program and converted to the surface temperature in degree Celcius.
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This is the Topaz Solar Farm in the Carrizo Plain,
San Luis Obispo, California
35° 23' North, 120°4' West
The Topaz Solar farm is a photovoltaic type installation where there are solar cell panels mounted on the ground, 9,000,000 panels to be exact. This has the ability to generate 550 megawatts of electricity for Californian residents.
Can we monitor the surface temperature of the ground at a Photovoltaic Solar Farm?
We are at the edge of the realm of solar power generating farms being installed all over the world, but what happens to the surface where they are?
How can we monitor that?
By using remote sensing.
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Topaz Solar Farm is located in the Carrizo Plain, San Luis Obispo County, California Image: Google 2016
This image shows a current view of the Topaz Solar Farm panel array. There are 9 million panels here. Image Credit: Google 2016
This shows the temperatures ~2 years after the array went into place. The panels are cooler than the surrounding ground, you can see how much cooler than the neighboring area they are. Imagery captured by Landsat8 satellite and processed by ERDAS Imagine and ArcGIS. Image by RBanks 11/2016 Data provided by http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov
Topaz Solar Farm is located in the Carrizo Plain, San Luis Obispo County, California Image: Google 2016
Installation of the Topaz Solar Farm started May 2012 and was finished mid 2014. It is currently running at about 25% capacity according to data on the US' Energy Information Administration page. Flip through the gallery of images (using white arrows that appear when you hover over the image) to see how the satellite imagery can be used for this need.
How is it looking?
You might notice that the three thermal maps have data captured by different platforms, that is because some of the satellite platforms are superseded by newer sensors on newer platforms and do so not capture the same imagery as they previously had done. Calculations on the data makes the output from each sensor be normalized so that output from different platforms can be compared against each other reliably.
If you would like to learn about this calculation process head over to the Gritty Details page.
There has been research projects on this topic over the years and you can find some related research paper links on this page.