An ANN-based approach for predicting global radiation in locations with no direct measurement instrumentation

In this work, a novel approach using an artificial neural network was used to develop a model for analyzing the relationship between the Global Radiation (GR) and climatological variables, and to predict GR for locations not covered by the model's training data. The predicted global radiation values for the different locations (for different months) were then compared with the actual values. Results indicate that the model predicted the Global Radiation values with a good accuracy of approximately 93% and a mean absolute percentage error of 7.30. In addition, the model was also tested to predict GR values for the Seeb location over a 12 month period. The monthly, predicted values of the ANN model compared to the actual GR values for Seeb produced an accuracy of 95% and a mean absolute percentage error of 5.43. Data for these locations were nor included as part of the ANN training data. Hence, these results demonstrate the generalization capability of this novel approach over unseen data and its ability to produce accurate estimates. Finally, this ANN-based model was also used to predict the global radiation values for Majees, a new location in north Oman. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.