Global Solar Radiation Prediction using Empirical based Models

Abstract

Solar Radiation (SR) is crucial for the energy balance at the Earth's surface, evaporation, snow melting, plant water needs, and catchment hydrological regulation. In this regard, the major goal of this research is constructing a mathematical model or in other words empirical model to estimate the amount of SR upon a horizontal region in terms of latitude for four Indian cities. The cities considered for this work are NewDelhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Coimbatore. Based on the input parameters, two categories of empirical models are developed namely, category 1 is sunshine duration (SD) based models and category 2 is air temperature (AT) based models. For performance evaluation, the metrics mean percentage error (MPE), mean bias error (MBE), mean absolute bias error (MABE), root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and coefficient of determination (R <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> ). The results signify that both the category of empirical models have a promising capability in this field of research and can hence be an efficient option for solar forecasting.