Abstract
The proper design of installations utilizing solar radiation requires the accurate knowledge of solar radiation availability on horizontal and tilted surfaces as well as its direct/total and diffuse components. The measurement of diffuse radiation normally requires a sun tracking or shading device. However, a new integrated instrument, model SPN1, has been presented by Delta-T Devices, incorporating seven miniature thermopile sensors, a built-in microprocessor, and an internal shading device with no moving parts. SPN1 sensor is able to perform simultaneously measurements of both the global and diffuse solar radiation reaching a horizontal surface and can also estimate sunshine duration. Such a sensor was installed at NOA’s actinometric station at Penteli site, during summer 2011, to assess its performance against classic measurements of global irradiance by thermopile pyranometer and diffuse with a shading ring. Stated accuracies are easily verified for 1-min measurements of total solar radiation, with RMSE values varying between 2.6% and 3.6%, whereas for the diffuse radiation, stated accuracies were not possible to verify, with RMSE values varying between 10.8% and 17.0%. This may be due to measurement inaccuracies, yet for the diffuse component there might be a need for a correction factor to improve accuracies.
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