Prediction of Global Horizontal Irradiance for Composite Climatic Zone in India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52825/solarpaces.v2i.798Keywords:
Global Horizontal Irradiance, WRF-Solar, Cloud Opacity, Day-Ahead ForecastingAbstract
Prediction of Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) is integral for solar energy applications. The current study focused on the prediction of GHI for 14 days ahead in New Delhi, India, by Weather Research Forecasting Solar (WRF-Solar). The forecasting of solar radiation is performed for various seasons in a year. A two-way nesting domain with a grid spacing of 9 km for the outer domain and 3 km for the inner domain has been used. The Rapid Radiative Transfer model has been used for shortwave radiation scheme. The outputs were fetched directly from the model and validated against the values provided by Solcast®. The evaluation was performed individually for all days, and results were shown from Day 5 to Day 14, since the first four days were considered spin-off time. Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) for the summer season ranges from 3% - 29%, monsoon season ranges from 10% - 112%, winter season ranges from 12% - 364%, and post-monsoon season ranges from 30% - 115%. WRF-Solar predicts the GHI with low uncertainty for the summer season and possesses high error during the monsoon season. Even though the statement is made against the average values over the time horizon. There are instances in winter and post-monsoon which possess high error for certain times and not for most of the time. It indicates that the WRF-Solar model performs well for clear days and average for over cloudy and overcast sky conditions.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Naveen Krishnan, K. Ravi Kumar
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Accepted 2025-01-23
Published 2025-07-03