New temperature dependent models for estimating global solar radiation across the midland climatic zone of Nigeria

Abstract

Authentic information of the availability of global solar radiation is significant to agro/hydro meteorologists, atmospheric Physicists and solar energy engineers for the purpose of local and international marketing, designs and manufacturing of solar equipment. In this study, five new proposed temperature dependent models were evaluated using measured monthly average daily global solar radiation, maximum and minimum temperature meteorological data during the period of thirty one years (1980-2010). The new models were compared with three existing temperature dependent models (Chen et al., Hargreaves and Samani and Garcia) using seven different statistical validation indicators of coefficient of determination (R2), Mean Bias Error (MBE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Percentage Error (MPE), t – test, Nash – Sutcliffe Equation (NSE) and Index of Agreement (IA) to ascertain the suitability of global solar radiation estimation in five different locations (Zaria, Bauchi, Jos, Minna and Yola) situated in the Midland climatic zone of Nigeria. In each location, the result shows that a new empirical regression model was found more accurate when compared to the existing models and are therefore recommended for estimating global solar radiation in the location and regions with similar climatic information where only temperature data are available. The evaluated existing Hargreaves and Samani and Garcia temperature based models for Jos were compared to those available in literature and was found more suitable for estimating global solar radiation for the location. The comparison between the measured and estimated temperature dependent models depicts slight overestimation and underestimation in some months with good fitting in the studied locations. However, the recommended models give the best fitting.  Â