Abstract
Renewable energy must be prioritized by humankind, mainly if there is an expected increase of 50% in energy consumption by 2030 and climate change scenarios are also confirmed. Urban areas consume 70% of the available energy on the planet. Brazil, the largest country in South America, concentrates more than 85% of its population in urban areas, facing a challenge to increase the renewable power plants in its energy matrix. This work presents the solar radiation components behavior for the city of Salvador to contribute with initiatives for the use of solar energy resource. Firstly, a radiometric platform was implemented to obtain direct measurements of global (EG) and diffuse (EDF) components of incoming solar radiation at the surface. The knowledge of EDF is an important requirement to support photovoltaic system projects, and there is no information on direct measurements of this component in the State of Bahia. The diffuse radiation measurement device (DRMD) was designed and built for this purpose. The measurements of solar radiation components performed in this research were submitted to a specific quality control, statistically analyzed and used to evaluate the performance of different empirical models to represent the behavior of EDF in the tropical coastal city. The results demonstrate the potential to explore solar energy in the city of Salvador, with annual values of sunshine higher than 2200 h year−1 and average daily intensities of EG and EDF equal to 18.7 MJm−2day−1 and 7.35 MJm−2day−1, respectively. The analysis of the diurnal cycle shows that EG in summer reaches a maximum of 4.2 MJm−2h−1 and in the rainy season it reaches a minimum of 3.7 MJm−2h−1, both at noon, and in summer the EDFh is 35% of the EGh and it is 46% in the rainy season.
Highlights
Energy is one of the most important resources available on Earth and humankind is clearly dependent on it to survive [1]
The results found in this work give information about the behavior of radiation components, sunshine duration during the year and the seasons and climatic characterization of the city that can be used in a infinitude of analyses related to solar radiation and photovoltaic generation; in addition, the empirical models developed here performed very well, and they can be used to estimate the diffuse component of solar radiation in other regions throughout Brazil with similar climate and characteristics to Salvador City
According to Köppen–Geiger’s climate classification and climate normal estimates of the observations carried out for 30 years (1981–2010), the climate of Salvador City can be classified as Tropical Rainforest (Af) [70]
Summary
Energy is one of the most important resources available on Earth and humankind is clearly dependent on it to survive [1]. 70% of the total energy generated in the world. These regions require large water reservoirs in order to produce electricity and stock fresh water for their own consumption [2]. Up to 2030, it is expected that the energy demand will increase more than 50% throughout the world [5]. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the global energy consumption pattern, since billions of people on the planet changed their way of working and living, since most people were forced to slow down or even stop their work activities in order to contain the spread of the virus [6]. On the other hand, when the economy kicked off a recovery status post-COVID-19 in the first year, a pretty quick energy consumption increase was observed in China and other high and middle-income countries [7]
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