6533b82cfe1ef96bd128e9fd

RESEARCH PRODUCT

An atmospheric model for computing direct and diffuse solar radiation

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Abstract This paper proposes an atmospheric model, which extends the computation of the direct radiation given by Cole's model to the cloudy sky and shows a method to calculate the diffuse radiation. Therefore the monthly average values of the global radiation incident on a horizontal surface at Palermo are computed by this method. These values are compared with the experimental data provided by the Istituto di Idraulica Agraria, Universita di Palermo and generally exhibit a mean deviation not more than 10 per cent. The deviations become lower than 8 per cent taking into account the effect of the underlying surface albedo. In order to better verify the validity of the proposed method, it should be suitable to extend its application to other locations provided with actinometric stations. This should allow to use this method with more realibility to predict the radiation incident on the locations lacking in actinometric data.