Patent ID: 8923567

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a solar irradiance predictor processor configured to process a sequence of images of the sky, wherein one or more images of the sequence of images comprise at least one cloud, the irradiance predictor processor comprising: a cloud classifier module configured to classify respective pixels of a cloud segment in the one or more images comprising the at least one cloud to indicate a solar irradiance-passing characteristic of at least a portion of the at least one cloud; a cloud motion predictor configured to predict motion of the at least one cloud over a time horizon based on the sequence of images; and an event predictor configured to predict over the time horizon occurrence of a solar obscuration event, wherein the prediction of the solar obscuration event is based on the predicted motion of the at least one cloud, and wherein the event predictor is further configured to predict an irradiance variation for the solar obscuration event based on the solar irradiance-passing characteristic of the at least one cloud.