Uncertainty Model for Total Solar Irradiance Estimation on Australian Rooftops

Abstract

The installations of solar panels on Australian rooftops have been in rise for the last few years, especially in the urban areas. This motivates academic researchers, distribution network operators and engineers to accurately address the level of uncertainty resulting from grid-connected solar panels. The main source of uncertainty is the intermittent nature of radiation, therefore, this paper presents a new model to estimate the total radiation incident on a tilted solar panel. Where a probability distribution factorizes clearness index, the model is driven upon clearness index with special attention being paid for Australia with the utilization of best-fit-correlation for diffuse fraction. The assessment of the model validity is achieved with the adoption of four goodness-of-fit techniques. In addition, the Quasi Monte Carlo and sparse grid methods are used as sampling and uncertainty computation tools, respectively. High resolution data resolution of solar irradiations for Adelaide city were used for this assessment, with an outcome indicating a satisfactory agreement between actual data variation and model.