Abstract
This paper presents the characterization of global solar radiation (GSR) for Malawi using NASA’s SSE model. The mean monthly daily GSR monthly variation in the three regions of Malawi has been investigated. It has been found that there is a general gradient in GSR in the north-south direction. This gradient correlates well with the variation of the clearness index in the same direction (r = 0.986). It has been observed that the GSR is characteristic of each region. Simple analytic polynomials have been proposed for estimating solar radiation in the traditional Northern, Central and Southern regions of Malawi. There is a strong agreement between the polynomials and the SSE model with R2 values of 0.988, 0.989 and 0.989 and root mean square errors of 0.061, 0.057 and 0.062 kWh/m2.day for the regions, respectively. Key words: Malawi, global solar radiation, solar climate, surface meteorology and solar energy (SSE) model.
Highlights
Accurate global solar radiation (GSR) data for a particular location is an essential requirement for the design of efficient domestic and industrial solar based systems.Such data is used in project design, cost analysis and in system efficiency evaluation
This paper presents the characterization of global solar radiation (GSR) for Malawi using NASA’s surface meteorology and solar energy (SSE)
These spatial and temporal variations may need to be considered in critical applications
Summary
Accurate global solar radiation (GSR) data for a particular location is an essential requirement for the design of efficient domestic and industrial solar based systems. Such data is used in project design, cost analysis and in system efficiency evaluation. In spite of the importance of GSR data, direct measurement is challenging due to high cost of maintenance and the need for calibration of the measuring instruments (Mubiru and Banda, 2008) as such models may be found to be handy to come up with. Many researchers have used models to estimate GSR. In their study, Safari and Gasore (2011) estimated GSR using
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