Global Solar Radiation Potential, Part 1: Model Development

Solar engineers, architects, agriculturists, and hydrologists dealing with many applications of solar energy require a reasonably accurate knowledge about the availability of solar resources at any place. For this purpose, in the past, several empirical correlations have been developed in order to predict the solar radiation around the world. The present study, consisting of two parts, analyzes global solar radiation over the Central Anatolia Region (CAR) of Turkey along with its twelve provinces. Part 1 of this study includes the solar radiation models developed, while their statistical analysis is presented in Part 2. In the analysis, the data of the monthly average daily global solar radiation and sunshine duration measured by the Turkish State Meteorological Service in the period from January 1990 to December 1996 are used. Empirical models to estimate the monthly global solar radiation on a horizontal surface for each province are developed. The results obtained have indicated that the models developed here predict solar radiation reasonably well for future projections.

Keywords:

• correlation models
• empirical models
• solar radiation
• solar radiation models
• model comparison
• The Central Anatolia Region
• Turkey