International Journal of Agriculture and Crop Sciences.

Available online at www.ijagcs.com

IJACS/2013/5-21/2650-2654.
ISSN 2227-670X 2013 IJACS Journal



Estimating global solar radiation from common
meteorological data in sari station, Iran

GholamrezaJanbaz Ghobadi
1
, Bahram Gholizadeh
2
, Sadroddin Motavalli
3

1. Islamic Azad University Jouybar Branch, Jouybar, Iran
2. Applied Meteorological Research Center of Golestan province
3. Islamic Azad University, Nur Branch, Nur, Iran

Corresponding Author:GholamrezaJanbazGhobadi

ABSTRACT:This study aimed to calibrate existing model and develop a new model for estimating
global solar radiation data using commonly and available measured meteorological records such as
precipitation or temperature. In this study, we were calibrated two solar radiation models including
Angstroms-Prescott in Sari, Mazandaran, Iran by using the least square error. For the study sites,
the coefficients of Angstrom-Prescott model were determined as a=0.22 and b=0.52 the statistical
criteria (R
2
, RMSE, MBE, and t-test) showed that these coefficients were acceptable. These criteria
were illustrated that two developed models were more accurate than Angstrom-Prescott model.
Keywords: Solar radiation, Angstrom-Prescott model, Meteorology factors, Mazandaran

INTRODUCTION

Knowledge of the local global solar radiation is required by most modals that simulate crop growth, and
is also essential for many application, including evapotranspiration estimates, architectural design, and solar
energy system. Design of solar energy conversion system requires precise knowledge regarding the availability
of global solar radiation at radiation at the location of interest. The Iran has the opportunity to utilize the solar
energy effectively, promoting a clean environment, and developing renewable energy technology in country.
The use of photovoltaic devices, on the other hand, is suitable for rural electrification, pumping water from
wells, telecommunication, solar thermal devices,etc(Almoroxet al. 2005).Given these many possible uses of
solar energy, it is important to know the global solar radiation distribution throughout the year for the interested
region.In addition, the values of the average daily global radiation in the solar energy applications are the most
important parameter, measurements of which are not available at every location due to cost, maintenance, and
calibration requirements of the measuring equipment. In places where no measured values are available, a
common application has been to determine this parameter by appropriate correlations which are empirically
established using the measured data(Yang and koike 2006). Several empirical models have been used to
calculate solar radiation, utilizing available meteorological, geographical and climatologically parameters such
as sunshine hours, latitude, relative humidity, air temperature, precipitation, cloudiness. The most commonly
used parameter for estimating global solar radiation is sunshine duration. The first attempt at estimating global
solar radiation was the well-known empirical relation between global solar radiation under clear sky conditions
and bright sunshine duration, given by Angstrom, sees(Sozne 2005). Theoretical and empirical models have
been postulated to compute the components of the insolation. Some of these models are theoretical, dealing
with the solution of the radiative transfer equation, while others are simply regression models.
The solar radiation modeling has shown significant progress in recent decades, reaching at present
integration in geographic information systems that allow quantification at its spatial distribution(Elagib and
Babiker 1998). There is a range of estimation methods, the firsts uses formulations that seek empirical
parameterization of the local physical conditions, using measurements in this field, from which quantitatively
describes the optical characteristics of the air by simple equations and attenuation of solar radiation on the
surface(Ehnberg and Bollen 2005). This paper presents analysis of the relationship between daily global solar
radiation and some geographical and meteorological factors. The reason for this approach comes from the fact
that the air temperature and humidity is worldwide measured meteorological parameters, and is used by
several authors in solar radiation estimation techniques. The objectives of this study were to compare, calibrate
and validate existing solar radiation models to predict solar global radiation from available meteorological data.
It is a goal of this author to find a model in daily scale based on meteorological variables without sunshine
hours will provide a significant and new contribution to the methodology.

Intl J Agri Crop Sci. Vol., 5 (21), 2650-2654, 2013

2651

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study area and meteorological data
The province of Mazandaran covers an area of 23701 km2 in northern Iran. It is constitutes the
northern slopes of the Alborz Mountain Range and coastal lowland along the Caspian Sea. It is dominated by
the green belt of the Hyrcanian vegetation zone, which stretches over the northern slopes of the Alborz
mountain range and covers the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. Sari province extends between latitude 37
N and longitude 53 E (Figure 1).


Figure 1. Location Mazandaran province in Iran

Daily data were taken from the synoptic meteorological station Covering the period from 1January 2000
to 31 January 2010. The following meteorological variables are currently recorded in the IRIMO1 daily
database: actual global solar radiation (MJ m2 day1), maximum relative humidity (%),minimum relative
humidity (%), mean air temperature (C), maximum air temperature ( C), and minimum air temperature.
Measurements of global solar irradiance were taken by pyranometer (SKYE SP1110). For quality control, all
parameters were checked; the sensors were periodically maintained and calibrated. All data being recorded
and hourly averaged on a synoptic station.

METHODOLOGY

The Angstrom - Prescott model is the most commonly used model as given by

|
|
.
|

\
|
|
.
|

\
|
+ =
N
n
b a R R
a s
(1)

Where Rs is the monthly average daily global radiation,
a
R is the monthly average daily extraterrestrial
radiation, n is the day length, N is the maximum possible sunshine duration, and a andb are empirical
coefficients(Allenet al. 1998). The values of the monthly average daily extraterrestrial radiation (
a
R ) are
calculated for days giving average of each month.
a
R Was calculated from the following equation,

(

|
.
|

\
|
+
(

|
.
|

\
|
+ == o
t
o
t
sin sin
360
. 2
sin cos cos
365
360
cos 033 . 0 1
* 24
s
s
sc
w
w
n I
Ra
(2)

1
I.R.of IRAN METEOROLOGICAL ORG
Intl J Agri Crop Sci. Vol., 5 (21), 2650-2654, 2013

2652


Where
sc
I is the solar constant (=1367 Wm
-2
), is the altitude of the site,
o
is the sun declination and
s
W is
the mean sunrise hour angle for the given month.
The regression models proposed in the literature based on Angstrom and Prescott and other
Parameters are listed in Table 1(Lopez and Rubio 2000).

Table 1. Regression models proposed in the literature
Source Model symbol Regression equation
( 1940)Angstrom and Prescott M1
|
|
.
|

\
|
|
.
|

\
|
+ =
N
n
b a R R
a s
Akinoglu and Ecevit (1990) M2
|
|
.
|

\
|
|
.
|

\
|
+ + =
2
N
n
c
N
n
b a R R
a s
Alagib and Mansel (2000) M3 |
.
|

\
|
=
N
n
b a R R
a s
exp
Allen (1998) M4
min max
T T a R R
a s
=
Bristol and Kemble (1984) M5 ( ) ( ) ( )
c
a s
T T b a R R
min max
exp 1 =
Chen (2004) M6 ( )
|
|
.
|

\
|
+ |
.
|

\
|
+ = d
N
n
b T T a R R
c
a s min max
ln
Bahel (1987) M7 |
.
|

\
|
+ + + = ) (
min max
T T d RH c
N
n
b a R R
a s
Abdullah (1994) M8
|
|
.
|

\
|
|
.
|

\
|
+ |
.
|

\
|
+ + =
3 2
N
n
d
N
n
c
N
n
b a R R
a s

Comparison Techniques
There are numerous works which deal with the assessment and comparison of monthly mean daily solar
radiation estimation models. The most popular statistical parameters are the mean bias error (MBE) and the
root mean square error (RMSE). In this study, to evaluate the accuracy of the estimated data, from the models
described above, the following statistical tests were used, MBE, RMSE and coefficient of correlation (r), to test
the linear relationship between predicted and measured values. For better data modeling, these statistics
should be closer to zero, but coefficient of correlation, r, should approach to 1 as closely as possible.

The Mean Bias Error
This test provides information on long-term performance. A low MBE value is desired. A negative value gives
the average amount of underestimation in the calculated value. So, one drawback of these two mentioned tests
is that overestimation of an individual observation will cancel underestimation in a separate observation.
n
O P
MBE
n
i i

=
1
) (
(3)

The Root Mean Square Error
The value of RMSE is always positive, representing zero in the ideal case. The normalized root mean square
error gives information on the short term performance of the correlations by allowing a term by term comparison
of the actual deviation between the predicted and measured values. The smaller the value, the better is the
models performance.

n
O P
RMSE
n
i i

=
1
2
) (
(4)


The Coefficient of Correlation
Intl J Agri Crop Sci. Vol., 5 (21), 2650-2654, 2013

2653

The coefficient of correlation, r can be used to determine the linear relationship between the measured and
estimated values.

T-Statistic Test
As defined by Student in one of the tests for mean values, the random variable t with n-1 degrees of freedom
may be written here as follows:

2 2
2
) 1 (
MBE RMSE
MBE n
t

=
(5)


The measured global solar radiation data are checked for errors and inconsistencies. The purpose of
data quality control is to eliminate spurious data and inaccurate measurements. In the database, there are
missing and invalid measurements in the data and they are identified in the data. The missing and invalid
measurements account for approximately 0.5% of the whole database. To complete the data, missing and
atypical data are replaced by estimated values(Almoroxet al. 2005).


Figure2.Correlation of measured and estimated radiation data by Angstrom model,(a): calibration, (b) validation

The objective of this study was to evaluate various models for the estimation of the monthly average
daily global radiation on a horizontal surface from bright sunshine hours and to select the most appropriate
model for Sari station. All available empirical models that can be used to estimate monthly average daily global
solar radiation Sari station in Iran have been collected from literatures to evaluate the applicability of these
models. The collected models were compared on the basis of the statistical error tests such as mean bias error
(MBE), root mean square error (RMSE), correlation coefficient (r) and the t-test. According to the results,
Angstrom and Prescott model showed the good estimation of the monthly average daily global solar radiation
on a horizontal surface for Sari station. Therefore, based on the statistical results a new simple linear model
Intl J Agri Crop Sci. Vol., 5 (21), 2650-2654, 2013

2654

R/Ra= 0.22 + 0.52 (n/N) based on modified Angstrom model is extremely recommended to estimate monthly
average daily global solar radiation for Terengganu state areas and in elsewhere with similar climatic conditions
areas where the radiation data is missing or unavailable. The present work will help to advance the state of
knowledge of global solar radiation to the point where it has applications in the estimation of daily global solar
radiation.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this study, the accuracy among the ten models was determined using the data measured at Sari station
in the periods between 2000 and 2010.
The values of monthly mean daily global solar radiation intensity estimated using the above model were
compared with the corresponding measured values. The statistical tests of MBE, RMSE, r and t-test were
determined for the entire period; the results are summarizes in Table 2.

Table2. Statistical test MBE, RMSE, r and t-test for sari station, in the period of 2000-2010
R
2
RMSE MBE t
calibration 0.8649 2.4648 -0.1368 2.061
validation 0.8683 5.1495 -4.6284 66.17

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper is a partial result of the project, supported by the Islamic Azad University, Jouybar branch, Iran

REFERENCES

Allen R, Pereira L, Raes D, 1998.Crop evapotranspiration guidelines for computing crop water requirements, FAO Irrigation and
Drainage, Paper No 56, Rome.
Almorox J, Benito M, Hontoria C, 2005. Estimation of monthly AngstromPrescott equationcoefficients from measured daily datain Toledo,
Spain, Renewable Energy 30: 931936.
Ehnberg J, Bollen M, 2005. Simulation of global solar radiation based on cloud observations. Solar Energy 78, 157162.
Elagib N, BabikerSh, 1998.New empirical models for global solar radiation over Bahrain, Energy Conversion and Management, Mgmt
39(8), 827-835.
Lopez G, Rubio M, 2000. Estimation of hourly direct normal from measured global solar irradiance i n Spain, Renewable Energy, 21, 175-
186.
Sozne A, 2005. Solar energy potential in Turkey, Applied Energy 80, 367-381.
Yang K, Koike T, 2006.Improving estimation of hourly, daily, and monthly solar radiation by importing global data sets, Agric ultural and
Forest Meteorology 137, 4355.