Book Description

Data were evaluated from the rehabilitated 52-station SOLMET solar radiation network. For economic reasons, it is important that solar radiation data measured at a station represent as broad an area within the contiguous United States as possible, and that techniques be established to transform radiation measurements taken on a horizontal surface to what would be seen by an inclined surface. Methods applicable to these problems have been developed. A Climatological Cell Statistics (CCS) Method was developed to obtain the statistics of up to 24 variables occurring in combination with each other using surface meteorological data and to relate these statistics to the solar radiation measurements. A method to evaluate the differences between two insolation data sets, called the Wedge Method, was developed to determine the representative area of a radiation measurement site. These methods were used to evaluate the capabilities of the NOAA Solar Radiation Model to interpolate between measurement sites. Twenty-four methods of calculating solar radiation on inclined surfaces were investigated. All algorithms were rewritten in a common convention and nomenclature and the measurements required for each method were categorized.