[Medium] How does the annual irradiance differ year-to-year in SLC?

[kandersolar]

Long-term irradiance is freely available from PVGIS and can easily be retrieved using the pvlib.iotools.get_pvgis_hourly function. PVGIS offers irradiance databases for Europe and North America.

Method
For Salt Lake City (or substitute a location of your choosing), retrieve ERA5 reanalysis data for the period 2005-2020 and investigate the interannual variability. For example, generate a CDF of annual insolation and determine the mean, median, and 95th percentiles.

Follow-up questions

• What is the reduction in insolation for the lowest year compared to the average year? These comparisons are often used to inform financial risk calculations for a PV project.
• How does the interannual variability compare to the sites reported by solargis?