Estimating solar irradiation in the Arctic

• 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: Energy conservation; TJ163.26-163.5; Renewable energy sources; TJ807-830; Arctic; Norway
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1051/rees/2016048; https://doaj.org/article/14394cf7221641088ef43765e32428df

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.