Measurement 149 (2020) 107025

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Measurement
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/measurement

Atmospheric horizontal extinction determined with a single digital

camera-based system in the scope of solar power tower plants
F.J. Barbero a,⇑, J. Alonso-Montesinos a,b, J. Ballestrín c, M.E. Carra c, J. Fernández-Reche c
a
Departamento de Química y Física, Universidad de Almería, Spain
b
CIESOL, Joint Center of the University of Almería-CIEMAT, Almería, Spain
c
CIEMAT-Plataforma Solar de Almería, Solar Concentrating Systems Unit, Tabernas, Almería, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A methodology based on the use of a single digital camera has been developed to determine the horizon-
Received 13 May 2019 tal attenuation of solar radiation between the field of heliostats and the receiver in a solar tower plant.
Received in revised form 22 July 2019 For this purpose, only the measurement of ambient light and a dark object at known distance is needed.
Accepted 2 September 2019
The scenario for this work has been the Plataforma Solar de Almería (PSA, SE Spain), where a large black
Available online 5 September 2019
surface is available. This surface has been designed to be used for a horizontal attenuation measurement
system, developed and implemented at the PSA, which is based on the use of two identical digital cam-
Keywords:
eras. Specifically, the horizontal atmospheric attenuation values provided from the single camera-based
Atmospheric transmittance
Horizontal radiation attenuation
system and the two camera-based system were compared during several days of July 2018, in conditions
Solar power tower plants of medium values of atmospheric turbidity. A good agreement between the attenuation values obtained
Digital cameras with both methods, within their respective uncertainty margins, has been found.
Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction the expansion of concentrated solar energy, which aims to expand

In solar power tower plants, the solar radiation reflected by the
farthest heliostats must travel a great distance to reach the recei-
ver, in which the solar radiation is transformed into useful energy,
heat process. In this trip through the lower layer of the atmo-
sphere, the solar radiation undergoes processes of absorption and
scattering, in short, it is attenuated.
In some central tower solar plants, there are concentric rows of
heliostats at distances greater than one kilometer from the tower,
and plants with heliostats at even greater distances are being
designed. If the characteristic values of the horizontal atmospheric
attenuation are significant at the site of the plant, the contribution
to the energy production of the distant heliostats may be so low
that, from the economic point of view, their integration into the
plant would not be profitable. Estimates made with the MODTRAN
radiation transfer code, based on a US1976 standard atmosphere
and a concentration of rural-type aerosols that limit visibility to
5 km, show that the power losses by horizontal atmospheric atten-
uation at a distance of 1 km can reach 40% [1].
Accurately determining the horizontal atmospheric attenuation
of solar radiation at a site is one of the problems that can condition
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jbarbero@ual.es (F.J. Barbero).
the fields of heliostats at great distances.
Several methodologies have been developed to estimate the
power losses by the interposed atmosphere in these facilities, some
of them based on measurement with different types of equipment
designed to measure visibility, such as forward-scatter meters or
transmissometers. Drawbacks with these equipments that mea-
sure visibility are that either measure monochromatic radiation
or, even measuring in a wide spectral range, they only register
the attenuation that takes place, by scattering and/or absorption,
in a small sensitive volume or a short distance [2].
A methodology has been developed in [3] that use the visibility
data obtained with a forward-scatter meter as input data to a
radiative transfer code to estimate the broadband horizontal atmo-
spheric attenuation. But this methodology has not been contrasted
with real-time broadband visibility measurements.
In the 1990s pioneering work demonstrated the use film cam-
eras to determine the visibility or relative distances between
objects in a scene, with a depth from scattering methodology [4].
Now, digital cameras are being used for twenty years as powerful
tools with very different purposes; to determine atmospheric visi-
bility, to estimate air pollutants concentration or to improve or
restore the visual quality of haze degraded images [5,6].
In the case of the visibility determination, a methodology is
described and applied in [5] that allow calculating the atmospheric
visibility using images of a landscape taken with a single digital

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measurement.2019.107025
0263-2241/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 F.J. Barbero et al. / Measurement 149 (2020) 107025
camera. In the landscape, the authors identify two photometrically
equivalent ‘‘dark objects” such as wooded areas at two very differ-
ent distances away from the camera, and a common background.
Applying contrast equations [7] to the R, G and B response bands
of a JPG image provided by the digital camera, they calculate not
only the visibility and the extinction coefficient in each band, but
also the aerosol Ångström exponent. The results were contrasted
with measurements made with a nephelometer, showing a good
agreement between both, and also its usefulness for the determi-
nation of visibility in episodes of dust intrusions. This methodology
referenced in [5] is intended to be very low cost; it is implemented
through a conventional digital camera and free software, and does
not use an artificially manufactured black objects.
Currently, the only method that directly measures horizontal
attenuation in a central tower plant has been developed at the Pla-
taforma Solar de Almería (PSA, SE Spain), and it’s been working for
two years. It makes use of two identical HamamatsuÒ model
ORCA-flash4.0 v3 CMOS cameras. The cameras are housed inside
refrigerated cabinets to protect them from the environment, keep
them in a controlled temperature range to reduce thermal noise
effects. Main characteristics of these cameras are: spectral range
from 400 to 1000 nm, 16 bits resolution, and black and white.
One of the cameras is situated near (82.9 m) and the other far
(824.5 m) from a black and white Lambertian target; the optical
system of each one of the cameras has been chosen so that it can
see the target with identical spatial resolution [9–11]. Both cam-
eras record the target image simultaneously and, also using a con-
trast formulation [8], calculates the horizontal attenuation at the
distance that separates both cameras, 741.6 m. Results of the mea-
sured attenuation at the PSA during one year of operation of the
two-camera system have been recently published [12].
In this article, the basis, methodology and results of the applica-
tion of a single conventional camera-based system are shown.
Attenuation values derived from this methodology have been com-
pared with those obtained from the two-camera based PSA system
showing a good agreement in the most of cases analyzed. In the
different sections of this article, the system based on a single cam-
era will be referenced as 1Cam, and the PSA two-camera system as
2Cam.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Measurement system description and data
The PSA (37.097005 N; 2.364750 W) is a Singular Scientific-
Technical Installation, which belongs to the Spanish System of
Science and Technology, and in which different solar receiver proto-
types have been evaluated in the past two decades. The main tower
installation with central receiver is the CESA-1, of 7 MWt [13].
A Canon EOS 5D MarkII digital camera, with resolution
5616
3744 pixels, and 8 bits depth per each channel (R, G and
B) has been used to take the digital photographs on which the
methodology described below will be applied. The camera was
located on the terrace of the DISS building of PSA, close to the far-
thest camera of the two-camera PSA system, at 824 m from the tar-
get. The camera points in the north-south orientation, towards
where there are some mountains of up to 1.5 km in height and
approximately 10 km away in a straight line.
Fig. 1 is an image of the reference landscape registered on July
24, 2018, around noon with the Canon EOS camera. On the left side
of Fig. 1 it is seen the scope in which the measurements took place.
The black and white target can be seen as a small square in the cen-
ter of the lower side at the image.
At right side of Fig. 1, the target enlarged can be also seen. At the
foreground the refrigerated cabinet in which the nearest camera of
the PSA system is housed can be also seen. Target is a square of
2
2 m; half is painted with a white paint AmercoatÒ741 with
76% reflectivity, and the other half with black paint ZynolyteÒ with
96% weighted solar absorptance [10]. Such a high absorptance of
the solar spectrum by the black side of the target assures that it
can be considered, for all purposes, as a black surface.
To implement the above described process and to obtain trans-
mittance values between the camera and target, a procedure has
been developed in MATLAB [14] software. The developed proce-
dure performs the steps from selecting the suitable clear sky zone
in G band of the JPG up to calculate mean transmittance and its
standard deviation in the target selected zone.
The most common air pollution (smoke, salt or fine aerosols in
general) or dust (in different sizes) increases the concentration of
particles in the lower layers of the atmosphere, in relation to a
clean air situation. The scattering of the radiation in the atmo-
sphere shows a spectral dependence with the size of the particles,
but in case of desert dust (with coarse particles) with very little or
no spectral dependence at all. It can also increase the absorption in
the characteristic spectral bands of some pollutants.
Scattering and absorption by the interposed atmosphere reduce
the intensity received from any target, according to Beer’s law.
Therefore, the presence of the contaminants increases the extinc-
tion of the radiation, although in a different way.
Dust episodes are the most intense phenomena that attenuate
the direct solar irradiance, and can be detected because the direct
normal irradiance decreases clearly and the visual contrast
impaired. The arrival of dust episodes can now be anticipated with
a certain margin of time from several sources; the Spanish dust
forecast center (https://dust.aemet.es/) provides estimates of the
expected values of the aerosol optical depth (AOD) in map format.
With this information, it is easy to consider if the future extinction
in the solar plant will be caused by dust.
On several days of July 2018 there was an intrusion of dust from
the north of Africa. Given that medium to high levels of atmo-
spheric turbidity were expected, the episode was considered a
good opportunity to compare the response from both systems.
The selected days were cloudless days, with direct normal irradi-
ance records at PSA showing high stability.
To mainly check the measurements repeatability, photographs
have been taken in July 18, 24 and 27, 2018, in three series of pho-
tographs, one for each of the cited days. Each series covers an inter-
val of approximately one hour from noon.
Camera was fixed on a tripod to point exactly to the same
panorama all the time in each day. Photographs were taken point-
ing from north to south, just as the PSA system does, and with the
following parameters: f/10, exposure time 1/400 s, and ISO100.
Images, automatically registered each 3 min, were recorded in
JPG format, but only the G-band of each photograph was selected
to be processed.
To determine ambient light, the corresponding rectangular zone
in the G-band was selected. It can be seen in Fig. 1 an example of
the zone, which is about 10° above the target level.
2.2. Determination of the atmospheric attenuation.
In this section, we will describe the methodology for estimating
the atmospheric attenuation using a conventional digital camera. It
shares the bases as the dehazing methodology developed by He
et al [15], called Dark Channel Prior, whose purpose is to restore,
with the highest reliability, images whose visual quality has been
degraded by the presence of haze. The so-called equation of the
image ([7,16]) is taken as a starting point and it is shown that only
the intensity of ambient light and a dark object, preferably black,
are needed.
 F.J. Barbero et al. / Measurement 149 (2020) 107025
Fig. 1. Left: Landscape from the DISS building towards the B/W target registered with the Canon EOS camera. Right: Zoom centered on the target.
Dehazing is a problem that has to do with restoring the image
visual quality, but not with the ‘‘true” transmittance value deter-
mination in the line of sight from the dark objects; therefore, it is
not critical to have in the landscape really black objects that, on
the other hand, are very difficult to find in the natural environ-
ments. The advantage in our case is that a black object is nowadays
available at the PSA site; a black target surface with a very low
reflectance black painting (less than 5%), which has been specially
designed for the application of the two-camera based PSA method-
ology. Taking advantage of this situation, concepts are adapted to
determine the horizontal attenuation of solar radiation using a sin-
gle camera with application to solar tower power plants.
A scene is directly illuminated by the solar radiation and by the
one reflected by other elements present in it. Each ‘‘object” in the
scene reflects the light that fall on it according to its radiometric
and photometric characteristics (from mirror to Lambertian
reflectivity).
When a scene is observed, the following phenomena can be
found, as Fig. 2 shows:
In the upper image, the radiance from an object is attenuated by
the interposed atmosphere (both by absorption and by dispersion
out of line of sight). The Lambert-Beer law parameterizes the rela-
tionship between the radiance emitted by the object and the one
that reaches at a distance d from it (radiometric variables depend
on the wavelength, although it is not explicitly written):
LðdÞ ¼ L0 tðdÞ ¼ L0 expðkdÞ
Fig. 2. Radiant intensity received from a scene. Left: Radiance attenuation by absorption and scattering phenomena through the interposed atmosphere. Right: Ambient light
formation.
3
where k is the total extinction coefficient of the interposed atmo-
sphere, t(d) the transmittance of the atmosphere from the object
at distance d, L0 is the object radiance; its response to the whole
radiation, G (direct, diffuse and reflected by all the elements of
the scene) that falls on it. In the case of a physical object L0 depends
on its spectral and directional reflectivity, q. It is written therefore
as L0 = q G.
In the lower part of Fig. 1, it is seen the radiance coming from
the interposed atmosphere; direct and diffuse radiation, and the
one that reflect the different components of the scene, interact
with the atmosphere creating an ambient light (airlight), which
is added to the one that comes from the observed object. Ambient
light is formed in a very complex way and contributes to create the
sense of depth that is familiar to us, in what we would call radio-
metric formation of the scene.
Thus, we consider the image of a scene before its passage
through an optical system and to be registered (by eye or a by dig-
ital camera), as a two-dimensional matrix of elementary surfaces.
Each one of these surfaces receives a radiant intensity from its
counterpart in the scene. We write the equation of the radiant
intensity in each of the surfaces as ([16]):
IðxÞ ¼ L0 ðxÞtðxÞ þ Að1  t ðxÞÞ ð2Þ
where:
x = position of the elementary surface in the two-dimensional
ð1Þ
matrix.
4 F.J. Barbero et al. / Measurement 149 (2020) 107025
I(x) = radiant intensity received on the elementary surface.
L0(x) = emitted radiance from the surface counterpart in the
scene.
A = Ambient light, assumed homogeneous in depth and through
the whole image.
t(x) = transmittance along the path from the surface
counterpart.
The spectral radiant intensity passes through the camera optical
system and is integrated through the CCD or CMOS spectral
response. Then, the integrated radiant flux on the pixel is con-
verted to a digital value, whose range depends on the camera res-
olution in bits/pixel. In most conventional cameras, there are three
spectral bands (R, G and B) and 8 bits per pixel per band, like in our
case. In this way, Data Numbers (DN) or grey levels for each band
are between 0 and 255.
Once an image of a landscape has been registered, the next step
will be to detect in it the ‘‘dark objects” that meet the requirement
of the proposed method. The term ‘‘dark object” does not necessar-
ily refer to a real object. A ‘‘dark object” has very low radiance, and
this fact may be due to not receiving any irradiance on it, or
because it does not reflect radiation in the whole spectrum or on
some wide spectral range; since, in the case of the Lambertian tar-
get of the PSA, it is a surface with a reflectivity less than 5%
throughout the spectral range covered by the cameras, one can
speak, for practical purposes, as of a black object.
Under conditions of extremely clean atmosphere, the radiant
intensity received from a dark object should be practically zero,
either in a large range of the spectrum or in some significant spec-
tral band. Examples of dark objects are intense shadows, black sur-
faces or saturated color surfaces in some spectral band. An open
window could be considered as a good black object.
For those pixels that correspond to dark (black) objects, L0 ffi 0,
and (2) can be written as:
t ðxÞ ¼ 1  IðxÞ=A
It is seen from Eq. (2) that ambient light, A, corresponds to pix-
els with transmittance 0. These pixels can be found at the sky in
the image; they have the highest intensity values in the image that
do not come from any object.
Once the ambient light is determined on an image, the corre-
sponding ‘‘transmittance” map will be obtained from (3). The
quotes written in ‘‘transmittance” arise from the fact that the only
true transmittances correspond to pixels of the sky or of the black
objects. Transmittances range from 0 to 1, but the higher values in
the image do not necessarily correspond to the black objects; can
be found in objects that have a relevant intrinsic radiance in the
spectral band in which they are being observed.
Measuring the transmittance value on the dark object, which is
at a known distance, the extinction coefficient of the interposed
atmosphere can be also determined following Eq. (4):
1
k ¼  lnðt ðdÞÞ
d Profiles for three photographs taken at 14:30 h (local time), one
Since we are dealing with not excessively large distances, the
homogeneous atmosphere hypothesis can be done quite realisti-
cally. Therefore, the attenuation of radiation at any horizontal dis-
tance, z, can be calculated as shown in Eq. (5):
AttðzÞ ¼ 1  expðkzÞ
The main objective of the proposed methodology is, therefore,
to determine the value of the transmittance in those image pixels
for dark objects at a known distance.
Given the image, pixels from sky must be taken at a suitable
selected area to calculate the ambient light. Then, histogram of val-
ues for the pixels included in this area will be calculated; the DN
average value of the histogram will be the value for the ambient
light, and the standard deviation will be the corresponding
uncertainty.
With the ambient light value, a transmittance map is derived
applying Eq. (3) to all the pixels in the image. In the same way
as before, an area inside the dark object is selected on the transmit-
tance map, and the histogram of the pixels included in this area
will be calculated. Average value of the pixels included in the his-
togram is the atmospheric transmittance from the dark object to
the camera and the standard deviation its associated uncertainty.
The described procedure to determine the transmittance could
be done in each one of the three response bands of a JPG image and,
therefore, be able to calculate the extinction coefficient in each of
them. In general, the extinction coefficient is very different for each
spectral band, greater in the B band than in the R band, mainly due
to Rayleigh scattering and the atmospheric aerosol characteristics.
In the case of the proposed methodology, in which images are reg-
istered from north to south, the received radiation at the camera is
mainly forward scattered, and then, the sky in the B band is the
brightest one, and the sky in it somewhat may appear also very
bright in areas near the horizon. This occasional proximity of sky
to saturation may produce an uncertainty that can cause this B
band to be discarded in many situations, especially if it is to make
a system for automatic measurement and processing.
The G band, which it assumed to be centered on the wavelength
of 550 nm, follows the photopic response of the human eye, and
has a very good response from digital cameras, according with
human visibility. In our case, since the objective is to compare
the results of our methodology with that obtained from the PSA
system, we will work directly with the G response band; the reason
is that the spectral response of the PSA system is also centered
around a wavelength of 550 nm.
An alternative to better simulate the PSA system spectral
response would be to work with the combined B/W image (B/
W = 0.30 R + 0.59 G + 0.11B), which provide a weighted average
ð3Þ
extinction coefficient over the whole spectrum covered by the
camera; in this case, the influence of the B band should not be as
relevant. At the Results section this aspect will be discussed.
3. Results
In this section, the horizontal attenuation values determined by
using the described methodology are presented and compared
with the corresponding values obtained from the two-camera
PSA system.
3.1. Ambient light determination
One of the uncertainty sources, at least from a theoretical point
of view, is the determination of ambient light. To evaluate the
dependence of ambient light value with the sky selected area,
ð4Þ sky profiles from the horizon line to the zenith have are shown.
for each of the selected days in the G photometric band, are shown
in Fig. 3.
It can be seen how the choice of the area in which to determine
ambient light was not critical, because the relative error that
occurs considering two areas 300 pixels apart is less than 2% in
ð5Þ
the worst case.
In Fig. 1, can be seen the selected sky zone to calculate ambient
light (identified by a small square over the mountains). The sample
covers more than 105 pixels, and the histogram of DN values is
found to be very sharp, and the standard deviation is less than
1.5 DN. But at the black target only about 350 pixels have
been selected as representative for to calculate transmittances.
 F.J. Barbero et al. / Measurement 149 (2020) 107025
Fig. 3. G-band ambient light sky DN profiles starting from horizon towards the
zenith. Blue: July, 18; Red: July, 24; Black: July, 27. (For interpretation of the
references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.)
Histogram for these pixels was built and corresponding average
and standard deviation values have been used for to calculate
transmittances and their uncertainties.
In Fig. 4, a transmittance map for the image in Fig. 1 can be seen.
Ambient light in the sky appears almost black, with values
nearly 0 and the black target is seen very bright. In this case a
transmittance value between camera and target of 0.910 ± 0.012
was measured. The corresponding extinction coefficient at the G
band is (1.15 ± 0.16)*104 m1, and the visibility (the meteorolog-
ical optical range, MOR), 26 ± 4 km.
To be able to compare attenuation values derived from the
1Cam system, obtained for a distance of 824 m, with those regis-
tered by the 2Cam system, 1Cam attenuation values were stan-
dardized at a distance of 742 m, which is the distance between
the two cameras in the 2Cam system. Distance between cameras
and target has been topographically measured with an absolute
error of less than 0.1 m; therefore, these variables do not con-
tribute to the calculated uncertainty when the attenuation at this
Fig. 4. G band transmittance maps for landscape and for the black and white target. Transmittance values range from 0 (black) to 1 (brighter white).
5
new distance is calculated. Results for the calculated attenuation
from both systems are shown in Fig. 5.
The absolute uncertainty bars associated with each measure-
ment has not been represented in Fig. 5 for clarity, but in the case
of 1Cam it is about ±1.3% and in the 2Cam system it is about ±2.0%.
Therefore, simultaneous 1Cam and 2Cam attenuation values fall
well into the respective uncertainty ranges.
It is observed in Fig. 5 that the 1Cam system seems to be less
stable than the 2Cam. This fact can be explained by analyzing the
behavior of ambient light and target DN values in photographs;
although the measured attenuation with the 2Cam system has
remained fairly stable, DN target value differences of up to 15%
have been found between two consecutive photographs; differ-
ences of 2 DN are usually found on values of 20 DN at the target.
But also the location of the camera in an open environment makes
it subject to variations in ambient temperature and small vibra-
tions; the consequence is that you would not be observing and
measuring exactly the same area of the black target. This fact can
be a consequence of the response of the camera when it converts
the received intensity to the corresponding DN value, which is
done with a resolution of 8 bits per band in commercial cameras.
In the general case, these 15% difference can lead to absolute atten-
uation differences up to 1.5%.
The case for July 27th deserves a further analysis. It can be seen
that the same tendencies are reproduced in both systems, but
systematic differences are found between the time series of both
systems. These differences can be explained from two facts: the
horizontal attenuation measured by the 2Cam system was charac-
teristic of a medium visibility situation, and also that the direct
normal irradiance (DNI) measured in-situ was the high; in fact,
the highest of these days (910 Wm2), showing that it would be
the final phase of the intrusion episode, as it can be verified in
Fig. 6, from the Spanish dust forecasting center [18].
It has not been possible to directly verify the low concentration
of aerosols at the PSA, since the AERONET network node
‘‘Tabernas_PSA-DLR” was in maintenance during those days. Indi-
rect evidence comes from the ‘‘Granada” node (about 150 km in
a straight line, in the same latitude and area of influence of dust
6 F.J. Barbero et al. / Measurement 149 (2020) 107025

Fig. 6. AOD map from BDFC for July 27th, at 12 h, showing the synoptic situation for
the final phase of the episode. Red circle marks the area where PSA and Granada are
located. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the
reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

a superficial layer of aerosol and water vapor of low thickness and

a clean atmosphere above it. With this configuration, the value of
the ambient light, which is measured in an area above the moun-
tain, would be underestimated; the line of sight from the camera
to that area would cross through a smaller concentration of pollu-
tants than in the line of sight to the target. As it can be seen in
Fig. 3, the ambient light measured on July 27 was the lowest of
those days. The consequence is that the attenuation would be over-
estimated in this case.
Statistical analysis parameters for each attenuation time series
and system in Fig. 5 are shown in Table 1. It should be mentioned
that the uncertainties that appear in the table refer only to the
standard deviation of the time series in relation with the time ser-
ies average.
Behavior of 1Cam attenuation time series can be characterized,
taking as true reference the 2Cam system values, by using the fol-
lowing normalized statistical parameters:
 
1 X Att1C  Att 2C
nMBE ¼ ;
N Att2C
!!1=2
X 1 ðAtt 1C  Att2C Þ2
nRMSE ¼ ð6Þ
N Att22C

In these expressions, each attenuation value determined with

the 1Cam system is related to the corresponding attenuation that
the 2Cam system has supplied at the same moment. They are,
Fig. 5. From top to bottom: 1Cam and 2Cam horizontal atmospheric attenuation (%) therefore, parameters that allow a direct comparison for consis-
time series (Blue, 1Cam; Red, 2Cam) in July 18, 24 and 27, 2018. (For interpretation tency between both systems.
of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web
Resulting values from applying the previous expressions to both
version of this article.)
sets of attenuation values, with N = 56 data, are: nMBE = 8.3%;
nRMSE = 12.7%. Therefore, in these conditions of cloudless sky
and visibilities in the range 25–40 km, horizontal atmospheric
intrusions) which showed very low values of the aerosol optical attenuation value determined with a single camera would be
depth (AOD at 550 nm = 0.05) in that day. DNI simulation with
the SMARTS2 code [19], for the PSA emplacement in that day
and hour, with low atmosphere water vapor content (the relative
Table 1
humidity measured in situ in July 27th was less than 30%), and a Attenuation (%) mean values and standard deviations for 1Cam and 2Cam time series
dust type aerosol with AOD at 550 nm of 0.05, provide a value of for the selected days. N is the number of photographs in each day.
940 Wm2, close to the measured one; therefore, the atmosphere
Day N 1Cam 2Cam
at PSA would not contain appreciable concentrations of aerosols
July 18 20 6.4 ± 0.5 6.2 ± 0.2
and water vapor.
July 24 18 7.9 ± 0.4 7.7 ± 0.2
The combination of a low attenuation of DNI with medium val- July 27 18 9.1 ± 0.6 7.6 ± 0.3
ues for horizontal visibility leads, schematically, to the existence of
 F.J. Barbero et al. / Measurement 149 (2020) 107025
within a relative error margin below 10% of the value provided by
the method using two cameras.
It has been studied the possible dependence of the obtained
results with the fact that the spectral responses of the cameras of
both systems are different. For this, the attenuation values with
the single camera method were also calculated using the images
converted to the B/W format. Results show that no significant dif-
ferences were found by using the converted B/W image instead of
the G band of the same image.
3.2. Conditions that may influence the application of the method.
3.2.1. Influence of clouds on ambient light determination.
The developed method would not be applicable when there are
too many clouds at the horizon near the dark object; the determi-
nation of the ambient light is compromised by the difficulty in
finding free zones in which we can affirm that the received radia-
tion does not come from any reflection, which is the basic condi-
tion for to determine ambient light. But it is also clear that, when
there are clouds in the scene, the ambient light may cease to be
homogeneous.
When the cloud is in front of the camera, and gives shade in the
path of ambient light, it is a daily and verifiable fact that visibility
improves when there is a shadow interposed in the line of sight
[17]. Ambient light (which is forward scattered from the object
in the case of the PSA system) decreases because the interposed
atmosphere receives less radiation than can be scattered and then
less scattered radiance from the target is received. Consequently,
the calculated transmittance with (3) could be overestimated
depending on the size of the cloud, and then the attenuation could
be lower than in conditions without clouds.
In the case when the cloud is behind or on top of the camera,
sunlight reflection in the cloud (especially if it’s a dense cloud)
increases the radiation on the target, but in case of a black target
there is any effect. The ambient light also may increase, but as it
occurs in backscatter its effect is very small. Therefore, this situa-
tion should not be relevant for the attenuation determination.
3.2.2. Influence of the height above the horizon on the ambient light
determination.
Received intensity from the sky may depend on the pixel posi-
tion above the horizon; this fact responds to the structure of the
atmosphere, more concentrated at the boundary layer. When
selecting pixels located well above the horizon, the radiation
received in them has crossed a smaller thickness of the boundary
layer. But in the case of pixels too close to the horizon, ambient
light could be affected by multiple scattering, and some spectral
bands may become almost saturated, usually the B band. There-
fore, the ambient light value could be high that in the real case.
These considerations could be relevant when the dark object
has a very high horizon behind it (as it will be our case), but if
the dark object it is in front of a low horizon (such as a solar plant
in a plain), the location of the sky area for determining the ambient
light would not be relevant.
3.2.3. Case of low attenuation.
In situations of low atmospheric attenuation, and due to the
short distance between the camera and the target (824 m in our
case), the radiant intensity that is received from the black zone
(mainly ambient light) is very low, and the mean value of DN cal-
culated in it will be low and comparable in value to its standard
deviation; therefore, the calculated attenuation would be very
low and with a high absolute uncertainty.
7
4. Conclusions and final remarks
In the present work a methodology to calculate the horizontal
atmospheric attenuation has been proposed, based on images
taken with a conventional digital camera of a landscape in which
there is a broad cloudless area in the sky and a dark object. The
measurement of the radiant intensity from the sky in the image
allows us to calculate the transmittance of the interposed atmo-
sphere between the dark object and the camera.
The methodology has been proposed taking advantage of the
fact that at the PSA a black surface, with a reflectivity of less than
5%, has been specially built to implement a methodology that
directly measures the horizontal atmospheric attenuation using
two identical digital cameras. Without a ‘‘black object”, the
methodology proposed in this work would be too dependent on
the reflectivity of the dark object selected, given the short distance
between the object and the camera.
Results of the application of this methodology have been
checked against the results of the two-camera system at the PSA.
The comparison was made using photographs taken during some
days in July 2018. Under the special conditions in which the com-
parison was made, of days without clouds and with visibility val-
ues in the range 25–40 km, it is found that the proposed system
provides attenuation values within the 10% of those provided by
the two-camera system. It is noteworthy that these results have
been obtained despite the handicap that the ambient light has
been measured 10° above the target level, due to the disposition
of it in front of the mountains in the background. The differences
found between the values measured by the two systems on July
27 are a consequence of the special arrangement between the cam-
era and the target, with the mountains behind. In the case of a real
solar plant, in which the objective and ambient light measurement
area would be at the same level, it is not likely that this type of sit-
uation could occur.
It has been found that the location of the area in which to fix the
value of ambient light is not very critical, and has little influence on
the uncertainty in the determination of transmittance. However,
the calculated transmittance is very dependent on the radiant
intensity from the black object, especially in low turbidity
circumstances. Due to this last aspect, it has been observed that,
in circumstances of high atmospheric stability, as detected by the
two-camera system, the proposed methodology may show some
margin of variability, although within its associated uncertainty.
Part of the problem can be attributed to the fact of working with
a photometric resolution of 8 bits/pixel.
The proposed methodology is limited, as has been mentioned,
to clear sky situations or where there are no clouds on the horizon
near the dark object. This is not the case with the two-camera PSA
system, which can measure attenuation in virtually all sky condi-
tions. In this sense, the proposed methodology cannot be a compe-
tition to a system that can provide a continuous measurement and
obtaining long attenuation series.
But, on the other hand, it shares with the two camera method-
ology, and against other methods proposed to estimate atmo-
spheric attenuation in solar plant environments, the fact that it
works both in a wide spectral range and in real distances of the
application.
It is difficult to find black objects in all the spectral range cov-
ered by the camera, although it would be enough to be dark in
the range of the G-band. But, in any case, in the field of a central
tower facility, arrange artificial black surfaces it is totally afford-
able from the economic point of view and its profitability. As an
alternative, some structural elements of the central, even at more
than 1 km distances (tower, painted zones in buildings or others),
could be used as such objects. Consequently, this methodology can
8 F.J. Barbero et al. / Measurement 149 (2020) 107025
be used to have an easy and almost real-time estimate of the atmo-
spheric attenuation in the environment of a central tower solar
plant.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the PRESOL Project (references
ENE201459454-C3-1, 2 and 3) and the PVCastSOIL Project
(ENE2017-83790-C3-1, 2 and 3), which were funded by the
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad and co-financed by the
European Regional Development Fund.
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