Add KACARE stations

[AdamRJensen]

SolarAnywhere benchmarking used a number of high-quality stations from KACARE (King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy): https://www.solaranywhere.com/resources/data-validation/

[AdamRJensen]

Locations could be retrieved from this paper: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2016.01.053

According to Kipp & Zonen:

All Tier 1 stations comply with the measurement practices described in the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) Operations Manual. The Tier 1 research stations include a SOLYS 2 sun tracker, two CMP 21 pyranometers ventilated with the CVF4, one CHP1 pyrheliometer and a ventilated CGR 4 pyrgeometer.

However, it's unknown which stations are still in operation.

[AdamRJensen]

Email sent to the Solar Energy authors on 30-01-2024 to enquire about which stations are still active.

The API provided only gives metadata.

[IoannisSifnaios]

More material here and the actual map of stations with photos is here.

Some info on instruments is here.

The network looks active.

[AdamRJensen]

What is your "looks active" comment based on? Have you seen that you are able to get recent data or?

[IoannisSifnaios]

No, I did not get any data (it required to make an account, etc. so I did not look into that). I said that it "looks active" because they have grayed out some stations in their atlas, showing that they are not in operation. So I assumed that the rest are in operation... of course, that makes sense as long as they have an updated website (which I am not sure of)! I am also ok to change them to "?" if you think it makes more sense.

[AdamRJensen]

Question mark'em and I will merge it!

[IoannisSifnaios]

Question mark'em and I will merge it!

Done!