Calibration of Methods to Estimate Solar Irradiance in Northeastern Pará

Abstract

Two models aimed to estimate solar irradiance were calibrated in six locations in Northeastern Pará (Belém, Cametá, Conceição do Araguaia, Marabá, Soure, and Tucuruí). The first one is the equation of Angström-Prescott (AP), which requires observations of sunshine duration hours. The second model is a modified version of Hargreaves' radiation formula (MH), which requires observations of daily maximum and daily minimum air temperatures. Both models were calibrated to estimate daily and monthly solar radiation. The calibration of both equations for each season (i.e., dry season and wet season) in each location was also tested. AP has an average performance about 74% higher than MH for daily estimates (excluding Soure) and 83% higher than MH for monthly estimates (excluding Soure and Tucuruí). The use of seasonally calibrated equations slightly improves the performance of AP, measured by the performance index, by 0.68% and improves the performance of MH in most locations, when estimating daily solar radiation. The performance of both models is much higher when estimating monthly solar radiation than daily solar radiation, with an increase of the performance index of 10.95% for AP.