TY - JOUR
TI - Evaluation of global solar radiation using multiple weather parameters as predictors for South Africa provinces
AU - Adeala Adeyemi A
AU - Huan Zhongjie
AU - Enweremadu Christopher C
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2015
VL - 19
IS - 12
SP - 495
EP - 509
PT - Article
AB - Models for estimating monthly average daily global solar radiation were  developed for South African provinces. These models, in addition to the  traditional sunshine hours used in existing models incorporates ambient  temperature, relative humidity and wind speed as variable parameters for  predicting global solar radiation, making it different from most of the  existing models that use only sunshine hours as variable. Meteorological data  obtained for nine locations in South Africa were employed in the model  formulation. The accuracy of the models were verified by comparing estimated  values with measured values in terms of the following statistical error  tests: mean bias error (MBE), mean absolute bias error (MABE), mean absolute  percentage error (MAPE), root mean square error (RMSE), and the regression  coefficient (R2).The values of R2 for the formulated models are between the  ranges of 90% - 99%. It was also observed that for an accurate estimation of  global solar radiation in Eastern Cape Province, all weather elements are  needed. This implies that the models give an excellent prediction for global  solar radiation for their corresponding locations. Also, different errors  calculated for the formulated models are close to zero especially MAPE. The  result shows that the formulated models are good enough to be used to predict  monthly average daily radiation for South Africa and also, the inclusion of  some other elements in some of the models improved the accuracy of the  predictions made by the models.