Computer Simulation and Assessment of Solar Radiation Data for Beam, Diffuse and Global Radiation Used In Performance Analyses of Solar Water Heating Systems

Solar radiation data is essential to conducting performance analyses of solar energy systems. In India the National Solar Radiation data base has archived for some years (say 50 years) of hourly, daily and monthly data to some capital cities and districts. Since the computational effort required to simulate systems for 50 years is excessive, it is more convenient to use typical data in performance analyses by collecting data through simulation of a computer program for as many as years to any location, any time, any day and any month and year of different places of the country only by knowing the latitude and longitude of that location. Simulation studies have generally used the hourly values, although solar radiation can exhibit wide variations during an hour. Variations in solar radiation during an hour could result in inaccurate performance estimates for some types of solar systems, such as photovoltaic systems, that respond quickly and non-linearly to solar radiation. In general, only measurements of the global radiation are known, but for many applications the use of beam and diffuse radiations also needed. For this reason, many models have been developed to establish correlations between the use fraction and various predictors. However, at present, no reliable model which could be applied to worldwide stations, in particular to our country, has been found. Hence the solar radiation data has been predicted for various places like Chickbalapur and Ramanagaram using a computer program developed and comparison of these places for beam, diffuse and global radiations have been studied and assessed to prepare a solar data sheets for the future references needed to the locations in our country. The purpose of this work is to gather radiation data from a computer program developed to the locations like Chickballapur and Ramanagram stations and compare the differences occur in the beam, diffuse and global