Models for Determination of Solar Energy Potential

Abstract

Many solar energy systems require monthly average meteorological data as a basis for design. In the study, it was investigated whether existing solar radiation models are suitable to determine the values of solar radiation, and new empirical equations were developed which correlate the monthly average daily global radiation using sunshine hour data. The correlation models were compared by using statistical error tests such as mean bias error (MBE) and root mean square error (RMSE). The new correlation models demonstrate close agreement with the observed data. An application of this study was performed using the experimental data measured for Erzurum, Turkey.