Study of the Intensity of Global Solar Radiation Incident in Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University

Abstract

Solar radiation is one of mains alternative energy, widely used in present day. Measure solar radiation accurately is an essential for planning in application of used. Universities are the places that have used significant of energy all year long. Therefore, long-term measured solar radiation data is important, for understand in both quantity and variation in time period, for application of the alternative energy in future. The main objective of this research is to investigate solar energy potentials of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University, Bongkok, Thailand (Latitude 13.46°N, Longitude 100.31°E). A station for solar radiation was installed at Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University. The main equipment is composed of two parts: 1) a pyranometer from Kipp & Zonen Ltd., model CMP11, and 2) a digital data logger from Measurement Systems Ltd. model DX2000. The pyranometer is permanently installed on the top of a building. The data logger is keeping clean and safe inside the building. To analyze the values of the global solar radiations, the computer source code is written in Interactive Data Language version 6.1 (IDL6.1). The results show the variation of the average hourly global irradiance is about 800-900 W/m2 at 12:00 UTC. The maximum monthly average daily global radiation is 21.5 MJ/m2-day in April. The yearly average daily radiation at Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University is found to be 16.55 MJ/m2-day. The information from the monthly and yearly global radiation has relatively high solar energy potentials. Finally, the solar radiation database was also developed for use in solar energy applications in Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University and neighbor areas.