Cloud height measurement by a network of all-sky imagers

Cloud base height (CBH) is an important parameter for many applications such as aviation, climatology or solar irradiance nowcasting (forecasting for the next seconds to hours ahead). The latter application is of increasing importance for the operation of distribution grids and photovoltaic power plants, energy storage systems and flexible consumers. To nowcast solar irradiance, systems based on all-sky imagers (ASIs), cameras monitoring the entire sky dome above their point of installation, have been demonstrated. Accurate knowledge of the CBH is required to nowcast the spatial distribution of solar irradiance around the ASI's location at a resolution down to 5 m. To measure the CBH, two ASIs located at a distance of usually less than 6 km can be combined into an ASI pair. However, the accuracy of such systems is limited. We present and validate a method to measure the CBH using a network of ASIs to enhance accuracy. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first method to measure the CBH with a network of ASIs which is demonstrated experimentally. In this study, the deviations of 42 ASI pairs are studied in comparison to a ceilometer and are characterized by camera distance. The ASI pairs are formed from seven ASIs and feature camera distances of 0.8…5.7 km. Each of the 21 tuples of two ASIs formed from seven ASIs yields two independent ASI pairs as the ASI used as the main and auxiliary camera, respectively, is swapped. Deviations found are compiled into conditional probabilities that tell how probable it is to receive a certain reading of the CBH from an ASI pair given that the true CBH takes on some specific value. Based on such statistical knowledge, in the inference, the likeliest actual CBH is estimated from the readings of all 42 ASI pairs. Based on the validation results, ASI pairs with a small camera distance (especially if <1.2 km) are accurate for low clouds (CBH<4 km). In contrast, ASI pairs with a camera distance of more than 3 km provide smaller deviations for greater CBH. No ASI pair provides the most accurate measurements under all conditions. The presented network of ASIs at different distances proves that, under all cloud conditions, the measurements of the CBH are more accurate than using a single ASI pair.