Estimation of global solar radiation on horizontal surface in Erzincan, Turkey

In the applications of solar energy, the solar radiation data and their components in a region must be known for the design of a system. In the locations where no solar radiation data is available, this parameter can be determined by performing a reasonable correlation. In the study, the models of global solar radiation on the horizontal surface in the literature are investigated, and new empirical models based on the sunshine hour data for Erzincan, Turkey are developed. In order to indicate the performance of the models, the statistical test methods of mean bias error (MBE), root mean square error (RMSE) and mean relative error (MRE) are used. The results obtained indicate that the correlations developed in the study predict the global solar radiation reasonably well for the future projections.   Key words: Solar energy, global solar radiation, sunshine hours, correlation, empirical models.