EVALUATION OF GLOBAL SOLAR RADIATION USING MULTIPLE WEATHER PARAMETERS AS PREDICTORS FOR SOUTH AFRICA PROVINCES

Abstract

Models for estimating monthly average daily global solar radiation were developed for South African provinces. These models, in addition to the traditional sunshine hours used in existing models incorporates ambient temperature, relative humidity and wind speed as variable parameters for predicting global solar radiation, making it different from most of the existing models that use only sunshine hours as variable. Meteorological data obtained for nine locations in South Africa were employed in the model formulation. The accuracy of the models were verified by comparing estimated values with measured values in terms of the following statistical error tests: mean bias error (MBE), mean absolute bias error (MABE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), root mean square error (RMSE), and the regression coefficient (R2).The values of R2 for the formulated models are between the ranges of 90% - 99%. It was also observed that for an accurate estimation of global solar radiation in Eastern Cape Province, all weather elements are needed. This implies that the models give an excellent prediction for global solar radiation for their corresponding locations. Also, different errors calculated for the formulated models are close to zero especially MAPE. The result shows that the formulated models are good enough to be used to predict monthly average daily radiation for South Africa and also, the inclusion of some other elements in some of the models improved the accuracy of the predictions made by the models.

Keywords

Dates

  • Submission Date2013-07-14
  • Revision Date2014-04-24
  • Acceptance Date2014-06-07
  • Online Date2014-06-21

DOI Reference

10.2298/TSCI130714072A

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