Estimation of Global solar radiation on Horizontal Surface from Routine

Meteorological Measurements For Different Cities in Iraq

Ali.M.AL-Salihi , Mylaa.M.Kadhom , Ali.J.Mohammed

Department of Atmospheric Sciences - College of Science
AL-Mustansiriyah University
Salihi72@yahoo.com

Abstract
In this study , global solar radiation received on horizontal surfaces ,maximum temperatures, sun
shine duration ,relative humidity and atmospheric pressure for Baghdad, Mosul , and Rutba are
presented , analyzed and tabulated in tables and plotted on graphs and discussed for three selected
locations which represents different weather condition of Iraq. Mosul in the north, Baghdad in the
middle, Rutba in the west of Iraq. A correlation between the measurement of global solar radiation
and meteorological parameter were given for the considered location . the correlation and regression
coefficients , standard errors , of estimation , mean bias error , root mean square error and t – statics
Are arranged in Table1. The values of correlation coefficients vary from 89% for Rutba station to
97% for Baghdad station and the error of estimation are between 0.063 and 0.035, also t-statics
varied between 1.2 and 2.06 for Baghdad and Rutba respectively. It can be concluded that the
presented models reasonably predict the global solar radiation received on horizontal surfaces and
the expected solar radiation behavior.

Introduction
Renewable energy is considered as a key source for the future, not only for Iraq but also for the
world .This is primarily due to fact that renewable energy resources have some advantages if
compared to fossil fuels .They are, in fact, complementary to each other and can be used
effectively alone or in combinations of two or more renewable energy sources (e.g. wind and
biomass) [1].
The global radiation is an important parameter necessary for most ecological models and an input
for different solar systems. It is the ultimate energy for all ecosystems. Although solar radiation
data are available at most meteorological stations, but still there are stations in many region in our
country suffers from a shortage concern the solar radiation records , therefore we present simple
model with high accuracy depend on data which available in all meteorological data stations
.Various models have been proposed to estimate solar radiation by[2,3,4,5], several
investigation[6,7,8] have demonstrated the predictive ability of the Angstrom type one-parameter
equation correlating the global solar radiation to the percentage of bright sun shine hours in a simple
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linear regression form [9]. In order to estimate monthly global solar radiation the maximum-
likelihood quadratic fit was employed by [10].There are many empirical formulae have been
developed to estimate the solar radiation using different meteorological parameter [11,12,13], Iraq
geography and climate is well situated for solar energy potential and its potential is about 3316 hour
per year with average daily solar radiation is 501W/m2 [14].Although Iraq has high solar potential,
the use of solar energy in different life sectors are very limited. A brief description of mathematical
models examination are given below:
Several empirical models were development by many researchers to predict the solar radiation for
various location of the world, among these models, Kenisarian and Tkachenkova (1990) [ 15 ] also
Dincer ( 1995) [16] presented the most simple model, the data in these models were correlated with
their respective ambient temperature for estimating the monthly average of daily global solar
radiation. Kenisarian and Tkachenkova (1990) [15] noticed that the global solar radiation and
ambient temperature changes have periodical character, although the amplitude of these changes in
each location can differ from each other significantly, They proposed relation using Fourier series
for estimating global solar radiation depending on the ambient air temperature. In this study ,various
meteorological parameters employed to develop new mathematical model depend on sun shine
duration , maximum temperature ,relative humidity and pressure ,sample of the measured global
solar radiation and meteorological parameters tabulated in tables 1,2 and 3.Baghdad ,Mosul and
Rutba stations data have been processed and analyzed to obtain multi regression model .The
correlation coefficients and standard error of estimation regression coefficient a, b, c, d and e in
equation (4) tabulated table 4.

Model Performance
To evaluate the performance of the proposed solar radiation models for Baghdad, Mosul and
Rutba a statistical comparison is performed using the indicators, proposed by stone [17] , a t-
statistic (ts). This indicator is used a long with two the well –know parameters MBE and RMSE.
Both MBE and RMSE have been employed as adjustments of solar –radiation models [ 18,19,20].
The RMSE and MBE are defined as the follows:


 ) ----------------------(1)
MBE=(




  
RMSE=( ∑

  ) -----------(2)

Here N is the total numbers of observation and di the deviation between calculated and measured
values.
The test of MBE provides information on the long term performance of models studied. A positive
MBE value gives the average amount of over –estimation in calculated values and vice versa. The

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test on RMSE provides information on the short-term performance of the models as it allows a
term-by–term comparison of the actual deviation between calculated and measured value [21].Thus,
each test by itself may not be an adequate indicator of models performance because it is possible to
have a large value of the RMSE and at the same time, a small value for the MBE, and vice versa ,
Therefore, Stone [17] introduced the t-statistic as a new indicator of adjustment between calculated
and measured data , this statistical indicator allows models to be compared and, at the same time,
can induced whether or not a models estimates are statistically significant at a particular confidence
level, it can be computed using both the and MBE and takes in to account the dispersion of the
result .The t-statistical is defined as:
ts=(   1   /   ……….. (3)


Result and discussion

The monthly mean of daily solar radiation ,sun shine duration ,maximum temperature and relative
humidity ,were obtained from the archives of Iraqi meteorological office .The data covered a period
of seven years of daily data for Baghdad (33.22No,44.23Eo),Mosul(36.32No,43.15Eo) and Rutba
(33.03No,40.28Eo)which represented Middle, North and west of Iraq. Unfortunalty there are no data
of solar radiation for southern region, which is represented by Basrah station. The monthly average
of daily solar radiation have been presented and employed in present paper for each model in multi
linear regression from in the following equation:

G/Go= a+ b (S/S max) +c Tmax+ d RH + ……………………….… (4)

G : monthly mean of daily global solar radiation (M J/m2)

G0: monthly mean of daily global extraterrestrial solar radiation on (M J/m2), this value were
computed from following equation:

 !!  !+ "23
  "
# 1 $ 0.033 ()*  ,
) ×(()*-()*. */ 01 $ */-*/.……(5)
 !
Where:
 :monthly mean daily extraterrestrial radiation M J/m2
# : solar constant (1367 W/m2)
. :Declination angle
:Latitude of the station
S : is the number of hour of insulation,
Ws: sun set hour angle for the typical Day for each month ()* 4 5()* 67/-67/.8
Smax : computed from the following equations.


Smax= , ()* 4 67/-67/.…………….…….. (6)

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 Where:
.: Is the declination angle and - is the latitude of the station.
From Tables 1,2 and 3 we can summarize that the Global solar radiation measurements (G) on
horizontal surfaces have the maximum values at all considered locations appear in June, while the
minimum values are in December, The annual average daily values for the global solar radiation on
horizontal surface at Baghdad is 18.57 M J /m2/day, at Mosul is 14.75 M j /m2/day and at Rutba is
18.53 M J/m2/day ,The maximum temperature has higher values in July and lower in December and
January at all location. The annul mean of the maximum temperatures decrease towards the North
(Mosul station), where these values are 30.45 , 28.5 and 27.8 C° at Baghdad, Rutba and Mosul
respectively. The relative humidity has the maximum in January at all considered stations. Monthly
variation of (maximum temperature and relative humidity, global solar radiation and sunshine
duration), (G/Go and S/So) are illustrated by figures (1,3 and 5) for all considered stations, from
these figures is clear that:
The monthly variation of global solar radiation and sunshine duration have same trends where the
maximum values each mentioned parameter were in June and the minimum in January and the
clearness index(G/Go)and (S/So)have the same behavior for all stations. Figures (2 , 4 and 6) clarify that
monthly variation of maximum temperature and relative humidity have opposite behavior with all
considered locations. From table (4), the formulae of empirical models investigated in present paper
can be written as the follows.

1-Baghdad model
G/Go= 10.78+0.071(S/S0)+0.0026Tmax-0.00078RH……….(6)

2-Rutba model
G/Go=15.07+0.104(S/S0)-0.00139Tmax-0.00112RH……… (7)

3-Mosul model
G/Go=8.86+0.301(S/S0)+0.0035Tmax+0.00157RH…….….(8)
From Table 4 , we can notice that the correlation coefficient (CC) at Baghdad is the best , where it
is value is (97%) with standard error (SE) of estimation is 0.035 . the lowest value of CC is (89%)
at Rutba and SE is 0.0653 . The values of global solar radiation estimated using the proposed
models (equations 5-7) and compared with the corresponding measured values. The results are
illustrated figure (7) for considered stations. The models performance examined using mean error
(MBE) and Root Mean Square error(RMSE).The test RMSE provides in for motion on the short
term performance of the proposed model as it allows a term –by term comparison of the actual
deviation between calculated and measured value .Iqbal (1998),[21],Halouani (1993),[19],Almorox
(2005)[22],and Che HZ etal (2007)[23] have recommended that a Zero value for MBE is ideal and
low RMSE is very desirable .According to these supposition and from Table 4 we can considered
that Baghdad station which has the lowest values of MBE (0.002) , RMSE (0.0014) and t-station
(1.2) is the better among the presented models in this paper.

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 CONCLUSION
The results of this work clearly indicate the primary importance of developing empirical approaches
for formulating the global solar radiation on horizontal surface reaching the earth at different
geographical sites in Iraq. Baghdad model shows a good agreement between calculated and
measured values of the monthly mean of daily global solar radiation, from the above results and
considerations, the values of the correlation coefficients vary between 97% at Baghdad and 89% at
Rutba and the standard error did not exceed 0.063. Equation (6-8) are used with high accuracy to
estimated the global radiation on horizontal surfaces at the selected sites using common
meteorological parameters.

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Table 1:The monthly mean daily global solar radiation (G), extraterrestrial radiation (Go),
clearness index (G/Go), bright sunshine (S), day length (So), maximum temperature (Tmax),
relative humidity (RH %), for Baghdad station .

Month G Go G/Go S So S/So Tmax RH

Jan 10.6000 19.1000 0.5550 5.7000 10.0621 0.5665 16.8000 72.0000
Feb 13.3344 23.4100 0.5696 6.7000 10.8557 0.6172 18.5000 63.0000
Mar 17.7480 29.9000 0.5936 7.9000 11.8649 0.6658 23.9000 57.0000
Apr 21.6000 35.9000 0.6017 9.9000 12.9164 0.7665 28.8000 38.0000
May 23.4324 39.9000 0.5873 10.1000 13.7689 0.7335 33.6000 32.0000
Jun 27.0360 41.2000 0.6562 12.6000 14.2065 0.8869 40.3000 27.0000
Jul 26.0432 40.6000 0.6415 12.3000 13.9858 0.9081 44.0000 25.0000
Aug 24.6636 37.4000 0.6595 12.1000 13.2229 0.9151 43.3000 28.0000
Sep 20.8440 32.1000 0.6493 10.5000 12.2195 0.8593 40.3000 29.0000
Oct 15.8098 25.7000 0.6152 9.2000 11.1989 0.8215 34.2000 39.0000
Nov 11.9016 19.6000 0.6011 7.7000 10.2674 0.7499 22.3000 50.0000
Dec 9.8640 16.9000 0.5837 6.3000 9.7990 0.6429 19.5000 69.0000

Table 2:The monthly mean daily global solar radiation (G), extraterrestrial radiation (Go),
clearness index (G/Go), bright sunshine (S), day length (So), maximum temperature (Tmax),
relative humidity (RH %), for Mosul station.

Month G Go G/Go S So S/So Tmax RH

Jan 6.9503 18.3200 0.3794 4.6000 9.7938 0.4697 14.9000 85.0000
Feb 9.9696 23.3300 0.4273 5.0000 10.6386 0.4700 14.7000 78.0000
Mar 13.4176 29.5000 0.4548 5.8000 11.7640 0.4930 19.5000 74.0000
Apr 17.8645 35.1200 0.5087 8.1000 12.9291 0.6262 27.1000 69.0000
May 19.9324 39.1100 0.5096 10.0000 13.9220 0.7183 33.8000 47.0000
Jun 22.8274 41.2300 0.5537 12.3000 14.4449 0.8515 39.6000 27.0000
Jul 21.3598 40.5000 0.5274 12.0000 14.2539 0.8629 42.9000 28.0000
Aug 20.9938 37.2200 0.5640 11.8000 13.4466 0.8775 42.3000 26.0000
Sep 18.0511 32.3000 0.5589 9.7000 12.2340 0.7864 39.3000 30.0000
Oct 12.4989 24.9900 0.5002 7.5000 11.1648 0.6718 30.6000 51.0000
Nov 7.7921 19.4500 0.4006 4.3000 10.1474 0.4238 19.0000 77.0000
Dec 5.3619 16.3500 0.3279 4.2800 9.5730 0.4492 10.6000 81.0000

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 Table 3:The monthly mean daily global solar radiation (G), extraterrestrial radiation (Go),
clearness index (G/Go), bright sunshine (S), day length (So), maximum temperature (Tmax),
relative humidity (RH %), for Rtba station.

Month G Go G/Go S So S/So Tmax RH

Jan 9.2880 18.3600 0.5059 6.0000 10.0120 0.5993 15.0000 72.0000
Feb 15.1560 23.5400 0.6438 8.8000 10.8266 0.8128 19.0000 60.0000
Mar 18.6120 29.3900 0.6333 8.4000 11.8615 0.7082 23.1000 55.0000
Apr 21.7080 35.4500 0.6124 7.9000 12.9397 0.6105 28.3000 38.0000
May 23.4360 39.2200 0.5976 9.5000 13.8145 0.6877 34.3000 30.0000
Jun 25.9920 41.3900 0.6280 11.7500 14.2639 0.8238 39.6000 27.0000
Jul 25.260 40.5500 0.6229 12.3000 14.0372 0.8762 41.3000 23.0000
Aug 24.9560 37.4100 0.6671 11.2000 13.2541 0.8450 40.7000 26.0000
Sep 22.3200 32.1100 0.6951 10.3000 1202250 0.8425 38.6000 28.0000
Oct 15.3720 25.4400 0.6042 9.2000 11.1786 0.8230 30.6000 38.0000
Nov 10.9800 19.2900 0.5692 7.3000 10.2228 0.7141 23.7000 51.0000
Dec 9.0 16.3300 0.5688 6.0000 9.7417 0.6159 13.9000 70.0000

Table 4: Geographic Location of the selected stations and correlation coefficients , regression
coefficients , Standard errors , Mean bias error ,Root mean square error and statics.

Station Lat (No) Long CC SE a b c d MBE RMSE t-statics

(Eo) (%)

Baghdad 33.23 44.23 97 0.035 10.78 0.071 0.0026 -0.00078 0.002 0.014 1.2

Rutba 33.03 40.28 89 0.063 15.07 0.1 04 0.00139 -0.00112 0.007 0.027 2.06

Mosul 36.32 43.15 96 0.033 8.86 0.301 0.0035 0.00157 0.006 0.024 1.98

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