Evaluation of Solar Radiation Transposition Models for Passive Energy Management and Building Integrated Photovoltaics

Incident solar radiation modelling has become of vital importance not only in architectural design considerations, but also in the estimation of the energy production of photovoltaic systems. This is particularly true in the case of buildings with integrated photovoltaics (PV) systems having a wide range of orientations and inclinations defined by the skin of the building. Since solar radiation data at the plane of interest is hardly ever available, this study presents the analysis of two of the most representative transposition models used to obtain the in-plane irradiance using as input data the global and diffuse irradiation on the horizontal plane, which can be obtained by satellite-based models or ground measurements. Both transposition models are validated with experimental measurements taken in Murcia (southeast of Spain) and datasets provided by the photovoltaic geographical information system (PVGIS) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for vertical surfaces facing the four cardinal points. For the validation, the mean bias deviation, root mean square error and forecasted skill were used as indicators. Results show that the error rate decreases slightly for clear days. Better results are also obtained by dismissing data with low solar elevation angles so as to avoid shadowing effects from the surroundings in the early and late hours of the day, which affects mainly the performance of the transposition models for west and east surfaces. The results highlight the potential of equator-facing facades in winter time when the received irradiation can be twice as much as the one collected by the horizontal plane. It is also noteworthy that the operating conditions of all facades are mainly low irradiance and medium temperature at these locations.