The role of clouds in improving the regression model for hourly values of diffuse solar radiation

The study introduces a new regression model developed to estimate the hourly values of diffuse solar radiation at the surface. The model is based on the clearness index and diffuse fraction relationship, and includes the effects of cloud (cloudiness and cloud type), traditional meteorological variables (air temperature, relative humidity and atmospheric pressure observed at the surface) and air pollution (concentration of particulate matter observed at the surface). The new model is capable of predicting hourly values of diffuse solar radiation better than the previously developed ones (R2=0.93 and RMSE=0.085). A simple version with a large applicability is proposed that takes into consideration cloud effects only (cloudiness and cloud height) and shows a R2=0.92.

[1]  T. Muneer,et al.  Potential for improvement in estimation of solar diffuse irradiance , 2006 .

[2]  V. Muggeo.  Estimating regression models with unknown break‐points , 2003, Statistics in medicine.

[3]  R. Stuhlmann,et al.  Effects of burning of biomass on satellite estimations of solar irradiation in Brazil , 2000 .

[4]  Y. Malhi,et al.  Diffuse radiation and cloud fraction relationships in two contrasting Amazonian rainforest sites , 2010 .

[5]  Eli J. Mlawer,et al.  MODELING: The Continual Intercomparison of Radiation Codes (CIRC) , 2010 .

[6]  Arif Hepbasli,et al.  Estimating the horizontal diffuse solar radiation over the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey , 2006 .

[7]  D. Rosenfeld,et al.  Pollution and clouds , 2001 .

[8]  Martin Wild,et al.  Short-wave and long-wave surface radiation budgets in GCMs: a review based on the IPCC-AR4/CMIP3 models , 2008 .

[9]  John Boland,et al.  Models of diffuse solar radiation , 2008 .

[10]  Statistical approach to the proposition and validation of daily diffuse irradiation models , 2007 .

[11]  Benjamin Y. H. Liu,et al.  The interrelationship and characteristic distribution of direct, diffuse and total solar radiation , 1960 .

[12]  C. Bohren,et al.  An introduction to atmospheric radiation , 1981 .

[13]  C. Gueymard.  The sun's total and spectral irradiance for solar energy applications and solar radiation models , 2004 .

[14]  Ping Wang,et al.  Clear‐sky shortwave radiative closure for the Cabauw Baseline Surface Radiation Network site, Netherlands , 2009 .

[15]  Mariela Edith Arboit,et al.  Assessing the solar potential of low-density urban environments in Andean cities with desert climates: The case of the city of Mendoza, in Argentina. 2nd. Part , 2008 .

[16]  Amauri Pereira de Oliveira,et al.  Global and diffuse solar irradiances in urban and rural areas in southeast Brazil , 2008 .

[17]  Serm Janjai,et al.  A model for calculating hourly global solar radiation from satellite data in the tropics , 2009 .

[18]  Trevor Hastie,et al.  Statistical Models in S , 1991 .

[19]  A. J. Machado,et al.  Diurnal evolution of solar radiation at the surface in the city of São Paulo: seasonal variation and modeling , 2002 .

[20]  Gary G. Gibson,et al.  A Climatology of Surface Radiation Budget Derived from Satellite Data , 1999 .

[21]  C. Gueymard.  REST2: High-performance solar radiation model for cloudless-sky irradiance, illuminance, and photosynthetically active radiation – Validation with a benchmark dataset , 2008 .

[22]  Joaquin Tovar-Pescador,et al.  Modelling the Statistical Properties of Solar Radiation and Proposal of a Technique Based on Boltzmann Statistics , 2008 .

[23]  Lucas Alados-Arboledas,et al.  Efficiency of clouds on shortwave radiation using experimental data , 2014 .

[24]  Robert Tibshirani,et al.  The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction, 2nd Edition , 2001, Springer Series in Statistics.

[25]  Gerald Stanhill,et al.  Global dimming: a review of the evidence for a widespread and significant reduction in global radiation with discussion of its probable causes and possible agricultural consequences , 2001 .

[26]  Soteris A. Kalogirou,et al.  Artificial intelligence techniques for photovoltaic applications: A review , 2008 .

[27]  Amauri Pereira de Oliveira,et al.  Modeling hourly and daily fractions of UV, PAR and NIR to global solar radiation under various sky conditions at Botucatu, Brazil , 2009 .

[28]  A. Oliveira,et al.  A new shadow-ring device for measuring diffuse solar radiation at the surface , 2002 .

[29]  L. Wenxian,et al.  Distribution patterns of diffuse solar radiation in Yunnan Province, China , 1996 .

[30]  J. Orgill,et al.  Correlation equation for hourly diffuse radiation on a horizontal surface , 1976 .

[31]  V. D. Assimakopoulos,et al.  Comparative study of various correlations in estimating hourly diffuse fraction of global solar radiation , 2006 .

[32]  Samuel Luna de Abreu,et al.  The state of solar energy resource assessment in Chile , 2010 .

[33]  Bernhard Mayer,et al.  Solar radiation during a total eclipse: A challenge for radiative transfer , 2007 .

[34]  J. Mubiru,et al.  Performance of empirical correlations for predicting monthly mean daily diffuse solar radiation values at Kampala, Uganda , 2007 .

[35]  Ennio Peres da Silva,et al.  A survey of the current photovoltaic equipment industry in Brazil , 2009 .

[36]  Shaohong Wu,et al.  Estimating the daily global solar radiation spatial distribution from diurnal temperature ranges over the Tibetan Plateau in China , 2013 .

[37]  Chigueru Tiba,et al.  Solar energy resource assessment — Brazil , 2002 .

[38]  G. Stephens.  Cloud Feedbacks in the Climate System: A Critical Review , 2005 .

[39]  J. Soares,et al.  Radiation balance at the surface in the city of São Paulo, Brazil: diurnal and seasonal variations , 2011, Theoretical and Applied Climatology.

[40]  Non-stationary Markov chains for modelling daily sunshine at São Paulo, Brazil , 1997 .

[41]  Mark Luther,et al.  Modelling the diffuse fraction of global solar radiation on a horizontal surface , 2001 .

[42]  R. Stuhlmann,et al.  Survey of the incident solar radiation in Brazil by use of meteosat satellite data , 1996 .

[43]  J. Michalsky,et al.  Toward the development of a diffuse horizontal shortwave irradiance working standard , 2005 .

[44]  Validation of a Physical Retrieval Scheme of Solar Surface Irradiances from Narrowband Satellite Radiances , 2005 .

[45]  B. Holmgren,et al.  Hourly and daily clearness index and diffuse fraction at a tropical station, Ile‐Ife, Nigeria , 2009 .

[46]  C. Gueymard,et al.  Evaluation of conventional and high-performance routine solar radiation measurements for improved solar resource, climatological trends, and radiative modeling , 2009 .

[47]  Yingni Jiang,et al.  Estimation of monthly mean daily diffuse radiation in China , 2009 .

[48]  Lunche Wang,et al.  Analysis of ultraviolet radiation in Central China from observation and estimation , 2013 .

[49]  Viorel Badescu,et al.  Simple models to compute solar global irradiance from the CMSAF product Cloud Fractional Coverage , 2014 .

[50]  J. Duffie,et al.  Estimation of the diffuse radiation fraction for hourly, daily and monthly-average global radiation , 1982 .

[51]  M. Iqbal.  An introduction to solar radiation , 1983 .

[52]  Marija Zlata Boznar,et al.  Modeling hourly diffuse solar-radiation in the city of São Paulo using a neural-network technique , 2004 .

[53]  P. Bhartia,et al.  Derivation of aerosol properties from satellite measurements of backscattered ultraviolet radiation , 1998 .

[54]  Y. Lucas,et al.  Morphology and Solutes Content of Atmospheric Particles in an Urban and a Natural Area of São Paulo State, Brazil , 2006 .

[55]  A. A. El-Sebaii,et al.  Global, direct and diffuse solar radiation on horizontal and tilted surfaces in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia , 2010 .

[56]  S. Iniyan,et al.  A review of energy models , 2006 .

[57]  Zekai Şen,et al.  Fuzzy algorithm for estimation of solar irradiation from sunshine duration , 1998 .

[58]  W. Beckman,et al.  Diffuse fraction correlations , 1990 .

[59]  W. Chow,et al.  Solar radiation model , 2001 .

[60]  Huashan Li,et al.  Estimating daily global solar radiation by day of year in China , 2010 .

[61]  Marcus Jorge Bottino,et al.  A simplified physical model for assessing solar radiation over Brazil using GOES 8 visible imagery , 2004 .

[62]  J. A. Ruiz-Arias,et al.  Proposal of a regressive model for the hourly diffuse solar radiation under all sky conditions , 2010 .

[63]  Kamaruzzaman Sopian,et al.  Time series analysis of solar radiation data in the tropics , 2009 .

[64]  O. Şenkal,et al.  Estimation of solar radiation over Turkey using artificial neural network and satellite data , 2009 .

[65]  Ibrahim Dincer,et al.  Performance analysis of photovoltaic systems: A review , 2009 .

[66]  Margarita Préndez,et al.  Correlation between solar radiation and total syspended particulate matter in Santiago, Chile—Preliminary results , 1995 .

[67]  M. Steven,et al.  Solar Spectral Irradiance under Clear Skies around a Major Metropolitan Area , 2000 .

[68]  Trevor Hastie,et al.  The Elements of Statistical Learning , 2001 .

[69]  Amauri Pereira de Oliveira,et al.  Correlation models of diffuse solar-radiation applied to the city of São Paulo, Brazil , 2002 .

[70]  J. Olseth,et al.  An hourly diffuse fraction model with correction for variability and surface albedo , 1998 .

[71]  S. C. Kaushik,et al.  Assessment of diffuse solar energy under general sky condition using artificial neural network , 2009 .

[72]  Viorel Badescu,et al.  Modeling Solar Radiation at the Earth's Surface: Recent Advances , 2014 .

[73]  Catherine Gautier,et al.  SBDART: A Research and Teaching Software Tool for Plane-Parallel Radiative Transfer in the Earth's Atmosphere. , 1998 .

[74]  Edward M. Lungu,et al.  Stochastic models for sunshine duration and solar irradiation , 2002 .

[75]  Umberto Desideri,et al.  Solar-powered cooling systems: Technical and economic analysis on industrial refrigeration and air-conditioning applications , 2009 .

[76]  Nadine Gobron,et al.  Coupling diffuse sky radiation and surface albedo , 2005 .

[77]  Wei Gong,et al.  Measurement and estimation of photosynthetically active radiation from 1961 to 2011 in Central China , 2013 .

[78]  S. Iniyan,et al.  A review of solar thermal technologies , 2010 .

[79]  Soteris A. Kalogirou,et al.  Solar thermal collectors and applications , 2004 .

[80]  V. D. Assimakopoulos,et al.  The dependence of global and diffuse PAR radiation components on sky conditions at Athens, Greece , 2007 .

[81]  Arif Hepbasli,et al.  Diffuse solar radiation estimation models for Turkey’s big cities , 2009 .