The level of complexity needed for weather data in models of solar
system performance
Solar Energy, 71 (3):
187--198 (2001)Abstract
Intuitively one decomposes climate variables such as solar irradiation
and ambient temperature into their deterministic and stochastic components.
The deterministic component comprises a sum of contributions at various
frequencies, thereby defining the climate of the location. The stochastic
component comprises the fluctuations about this component, giving
the day-to-day weather variations. Boland (Solar Energy 60(6) (1997)
359) shows that on a day-to-day basis both components must be included
in building thermal performance simulations to give sensible results.
It is shown in this paper that on an hour-to-hour basis the stochastic
component may be disregarded in building thermal, solar process heat
and photovoltaic system performance without significantly affecting
the results. Since the hourly stochastic component of the solar irradiation
is very difficult to model, this result greatly simplifies the construction
of synthetic climate data sets.