Estimation of hourly and daily global solar radiation at clear days using an approach based on modified version of gaussian distribution

Abstract

The performance of two models, Jain and Baig, based on the modified version of Gaussian distribution function in estimating the daily total of global solar radiation and its distribution through the hours of the day from sunrise to sunset at any clear day is evaluated with our own measured data in the period from June 1992 to May 1993 in Qena / Egypt. The results show a high relative deviation of calculated values from measured ones, especially for Jain model, in the most hours of the day, except for those near to local noon. This misfit behavior is quite obvious in the early morning and late afternoon. A new approach has been proposed in this paper to estimate the daily and hourly global solar radiation. This model performs with very high accuracy on the recorded data in our region. The validity of this approach was verified with new measurements in some clear days in June and August 1994. The resultant very low relative deviation of the calculated values of global solar radiation from the measured ones confirms the high performance of the approach proposed in this work.