Solar Energy Resource Assessment Using GHI and DNI Satellite Data for Moroccan Climate

International audience Book coverBook coverInternational Conference on Advanced Technologies for HumanityICATH 2021: Advanced Technologies for Humanity pp 275–285Cite asSolar Energy Resource Assessment Using GHI and DNI Satellite Data for Moroccan Climate Omaima El Alani, Hicham Ghennioui, Mounir Abraim, Abdellatif Ghennioui, Philippe Blanc, Yves-Marie Saint-Drenan & Zakaria Naimi Conference paper First Online: 29 January 2022 456 Accesses 1 CitationsPart of the Lecture Notes on Data Engineering and Communications Technologies book series (LNDECT,volume 110)AbstractSolar energy is in rapid development in Morocco. Thanks to its geographical and climatic location, the Kingdom of Morocco is privileged to develop large-scale solar energy exploitation. The knowledge of the solar potential in a given site is crucial for most solar energy applications. The present study aims to evaluate the energy potential in several cities in Morocco to provide guidance to solar energy users about the available amount of energy. The assessment was done using 10 years of data from the Helioclim3 satellite database. In addition to the solar potential analysis, we performed a classification of the days to determine the dominant climatology based on the clear sky index. The results showed the dominance of clear days toward all study sites, and selected sites may be a promising location for solar projects with annual global horizontal irradiation reaching 2075 kWh/m2 and direct normal irradiation reaching 2463 kWh/m2.