Estimation of Annual Solar Radiation from measured temperatures by using Temperature-based (TB) approach in different cities in India

This paper intends to present the methods of monthly mean daily solar radiation estimation using Temperature-based approach. The main objective of this paper is to estimate the potential of monthly solar radiation using air temperatures at three cities of Andhra Pradesh, India. Solar radiation is the principal, fundamental and abundantly available energy for many physical, chemical and biological processes. However, it is measured at a very limited number of meteorological stations in the world. Since the temperature is probably the most registered meteorological variable, correlation models based on air temperature data are especially interesting to estimate monthly average values of solar irradiation in countries with lack of direct measurements. Measured long-term monthly air temperatures including maximum (T-max) and minimum temperatures (T-min), were gathered from meteorological stations and analyzed. Three combinations of air temperatures, namely T-max, T-min, and T-aveg were served as inputs. The approach in this present paper seems to be adequate to the data for a region with a diverse orography on the eastern Indian coast obtained from meteorological stations supported by their web site in India. Results: The methodology has also been applied to three city stations in order to check the procedure in places with different latitude, longitude and attitudes. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.