Title: Solar radiation estimated from measured air temperature: a review and proposed a new model

Authors: Mohamed Benghanem

Addresses: Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Taibah University, P.O. Box 344 Madinah, Saudi Arabia; The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Strada Costiera, 11 34014, Trieste, Italy

Abstract: Estimation of solar radiation from measured air temperature offers an important alternative in the absence of measured solar radiation because of the wide availability of air temperature data. Solar radiation is considered as the most important parameter in meteorology, solar conversion, and renewable energy applications. Many correlation models have been developed to estimate daily solar radiation using air temperature measurement. The main objective of this paper is to present an overview of methods based on air temperature data to predict solar radiation data. Published literature presented in this paper show the importance of air temperature data as a design tool for the simulation of solar radiation data. The models presented in this paper provide good estimation of solar radiation data, especially in isolated areas, where the weather data are not always available. Also, we propose one new model for estimating daily global solar radiation from measured air temperature for Madinah site. A newly developed model that includes the difference between maximum and minimum daily air temperature estimates the global solar radiation with higher accurately.

Keywords: global solar radiation; modelling; air temperature data; meteorological parameters; regression analysis; renewable energy; solar energy; solar power.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRET.2013.052937

International Journal of Renewable Energy Technology, 2013 Vol.4 No.2, pp.191 - 211

Received: 16 Sep 2011
Accepted: 29 May 2012
Published online: 30 Jan 2014 *

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