Estimating solar irradiation in the Arctic

Solar radiation data plays an important role in pre-feasibility studies of solar electricity and/or thermal system installations. Measured solar radiation data is scarcely available due to the high cost of installing and maintaining high quality solar radiation sensors (pyranometers). Indirect measu...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability
Main Authors: Babar Bilal, Boström Tobias
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: EDP Sciences 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1051/rees/2016048
https://doaj.org/article/14394cf7221641088ef43765e32428df
Description
Summary:Solar radiation data plays an important role in pre-feasibility studies of solar electricity and/or thermal system installations. Measured solar radiation data is scarcely available due to the high cost of installing and maintaining high quality solar radiation sensors (pyranometers). Indirect measured radiation data received from geostationary satellites is unreliable at latitudes above 60 degrees due to the resulting flat viewing angle. In this paper, an empirical method to estimate solar radiation based on minimum climatological data is proposed. Eight sites in Norway are investigated, all of which lie above 60 N. The estimations by the model are compared to the ground measured values and a correlation coefficient of 0.88 was found while over all percentage error was −1.1%. The proposed models is 0.2% efficient on diurnal and 10.8% better in annual estimations than previous models.