Solar power plants play major role in next few decade in energy distribution.

The possible way to

improve its performance is by forecasting short-term cloud pattern to make a decision, to
optimizing the system. Predicting how long solar radiation will cover by clouds is the way to
improve it.
Multispectral satellite images analysis is the most known and developed way to detect cloud
pattern. In this research they used Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) imagery to classify
clouds. They classify clouds by height and opacity. To determine the actual height of the clouds
they used sounder data and also radiometric analysis used to determine the opacity. Final step of
this research tracking the cloud motion using detected clouds pixels.
They used 500X500 km2 area centered by the University of Almeria. This image large enough
predict 1 hour forecast of clouds. To test the result they have been used TSI-880 whole sky
camera and pyrheliometeric data. First step of this research convert gray level in raster image to
reflectance and temperature using Planks law. These pixel value are compared with different
threshold value to tell cloudy or cloudless pixel. In here they used two types of threshold test.
First visible reflectance test, 0.6um has been taken for land pixel and 0.8um has been taken for
sea pixels. If reflectance is higher than surface albedo plus offset, a pixel marked as cloudy. The
second test comprising minimum sea and land surface temperature. These temperature data
collect other sources. If pixel value temperature lower than minimum value minus offset, pixel is
marked as cloudy. For the cloud tagging they used solar radiation. Cloud top level reflectance
compared against if it below 400Wm-2 it marked overcast.
Total 795 MSG images have been proceed to detected clouds. TSI-880 images classified in to
three groups cloudless sky, overcast and partially cloudy. Cloud detection result saved different

pixel size frames. Different frame sized use to remove uncertainty of whole sky camera. If
number of cloudy pixel is below 1/8 of total pixel situation marked as a cloudless.
Multispectral analysis is needed to detect the clouds and classify those terms of top of height.
Especially infrared channel are essential to determine the height and visible channel important to
determine the clouds opacity. Result showed that 90% of between satellite detected and observed
clouds cover for cloudless and overcast situation, and 75% of for partially cloudy skies.