Articles

Energy from the sun is an ideal new energy source for power systems, in a context of sustainable development, enthusiasm for concentrated solar power technologies is developing. Accurate estimation of clear-sky radiation is needed in many engineering, architectural and agricultural applications in order to integrate solar energy into the power grid. An evaluation of the irradiance input to solar power systems is required in many applications. Clear-sky models represent the maximum input of solar power systems, which is especially useful for forecasting solar irradiance and numerical weather prediction. This work examined the application of Yang model to estimate the monthly mean clear sky normal irradiance for northern Nigeria using meteorological variables like temperature, relative humidity and solar radiation considering the shading effect of the complex topography of terrain in Norther region of Nigeria, also to know the variation of beam radiation and diffuse radiation among the selected stations and also to ascertain the significance of aerosols, water vapor, and other transmittances in the estimation of the beam and diffuse radiation in the northern atmosphere. The modeling was computed using monthly mean maximum temperature and relative humidity gotten from the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET) for the period of fourteen years (1983-1997. The beam and diffuse irradiance for the northern atmosphere is compared by estimating their mean and standard deviation. Also, detailed information about the trend of radiation in each of the selected states in the northern hemisphere of Nigeria was obtained using a graphical method of data analysis. Result reveals that the value of beam and diffused radiation getting to the earth's surface depends on the aerosols, water vapour, atmospheric Ozone, gas transmittance and Rayleigh scattering. From the result above, the maximum beam radiation and the minimum diffused radiation occur during the raining season and the minimum beam radiation and maximum diffuse radiation occur during the dry season. This is due to the variations of these atmospheric constituents (aerosols, water vapour, atmospheric Ozone, gas transmittance and Rayleigh scattering) in the northern atmosphere on these seasons.