Quantifying Solar Radiation Over Northern India and Validating with Cropwat for Agricultural and Renewable Energy Applications

Abstract

Precise computation of global solar energy is crucial for many fields of investigation such as renewable energy, meteorology, and agriculture especially crop water requirement and irrigation requirement. This paper presents the quantification of solar radiation using weather data during the years from 2020-21. The results obtained were validated with the solar radiation estimated with the help of CROPWAT during the year. Statistical and visual approaches were adopted to validate the quantified results. Analysis revealed the high degree of similarity between simulated and CROPWAT determined daily solar radiation during the year 2020-21 over the study area. Very high values of Willmot index of agreement (1.0), Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (0.999), and Pearson correlation coefficient (0.998), and low values of mean absolute error (0.138), mean bias error (-0.024), and root mean square error (0.182) between them was observed during the year 2020-21 in the area. The minimum solar radiation reaching over the region were observed to be around 5.71 MJ/m2/day during winter season (January) with a normal value of 13.50 MJ/m2/day, while the maximum value of 24.5 MJ/m2/day was observed during the summer season (June) with a normal value of 24.13 MJ/m2/day over the region. The use of these data for further study is recommended as it is worthful quantification over the region.