‘The sun, which is solar system, is a sphere of intensely hot gaseous matter with a diameter of 1.39 x 10” m and, at an average distance of 1,495 x 10'! m from the earth, As observed from the earth the sun rotates on its axis about once in every four weeks, though it does not rotate as a solid body. The equator takes about 27 days and the polar region takes about 30 days for each rotation. At the innermost region, the core, the temperature is estimated between 8 x 10° to 40x 10° K. The core has density of about 100 times that of water and pressure of 10” atm. Such a high inner temperature is maintained by enormous energy released due to continuous fusion reaction. Thus, the sun is a big natural fusion reactor with its constituent gases as the “containing vessel” retained by gravitational forces. Several fasion reactions have been suggested to be the source st fl radiated by the sup. Most important of them is a reaction in en atoms (protons) combine to form one helium atom. The m: hell ium is is less than that of four protons, the difference of mass hae been converted to energy in fusion seaction as follows: 4(\H') > ,He** 26.7 Mev The surface of the sun is maintained at a temperature of approximately 5800 K, Ps Sidecars aommeben pbc ~a sphere flattened at the poles and bulged in the plane normal to the poles. Howev for most practical purposes, the earth may be considered as a spher 1.275 x 10’ m. The earth makes one rotation about its ery 24 ina period of approximately 365.2: a result the I lution about the sun on it. This is known as earth's albedo. ip is shown in Fig. 4.1. The seer‘Scanned wih CamScannerSolar Energy—Basic Concepts Fer from the sun at about 5760 K lies in the range of short wavelengths, peaking around 0.48 wm and that from earth at 288 K (15 °C) lies in the range of long wavelengths, peaking around 10 um. A useful term, Solar Constant, I,, is defined as the energy received from the sun pet unit time, on a unit area of surface perpendicular to the direction of propagation of the radiation, at the earth’s mean distance from the sun. The World Radiation Center (WRC) has adopted a value of solar constant as 1367 W/m (1.940"eal/em? min, 432Btu/f? hr or 4.92ieMj/m? hr). This has been accepted universally as a standard value of solar constant. ‘The intensity of solar radiation keeps on attenuating as it propagates away from the surface of the sun, though the wavelengths remain unchanged. Solar radiation incident on the outer atmosphere of the earth is known as Extraterrestrial Radiation, I.,,,. The extraterrestrial radiation deviates from solar constant value due to two reasons. The first is the variation in the radiation emitted by the sun itself. The variation due to this reason is less than +1.5 per cent with different periodicities. The second is the variation of earth-sun distance arising from earth’s slightly elliptic path. The variation due to this reason is +3 per cent and is given by: Tex¢ =I, [1 + 0.033 cos (360 n/365)] W/m?. (4.2) where, n is the day of the year starting from January 1. ‘The extraterrestrial radiation, being outside the atmosphere, is not affected by changes in atmospheric conditions. While passing through the atmosphere it is subjected to mechanisms of atmospheric absorption and scattering depending on __ atmospheric conditions, depleting its intensity. A fraction of scattered radiation is back to space while remaining is directed downwards. Solar radiation h z i rough the earth’s atmosphere is known. inl expressed as energy per unit time tion. The term SolarNP Ns t= ain See} cos &cos @sin ave" th 4k frei ole, Saud ryeg, pie Inclined surface Horizontal plane Normal to inclined surface ™~.__ Sun's ray + Earth (Cross section s in vertical plane) Figure 4.18 Angle of latitude, tilt angle, angle of incidence At sunrise the sunrays are parallel to the horizontal surface. Hence the angle af| incidence, 6; = 8, = 90°, the corresponding hour angle, «, from Eq. (4.7): (4.10 The hour angle, c, at sunrise (or sunset) for horizontal surface is given br Eq. (4.11), which yields positive and negative values for @,, The positive value corresponds to sunrise while the negative to sunset, The hour angle between sunrise and sunset is given by: Since 15° of hour angle is equivalent to one-hour duration, the duration of sunshine hours, tz or daylight hours is given by: (4.123 ‘The variation of t, with latitude (9) for different days (n) of the year is shown in Fig. 4.19. The hour angle (@,) at sunrise or sunset as seen by the observer on an inclined _ surface facing due south (ie. y= 0) will also be given by Eq. (4.11) if the day under consideration lies between September 22 and March 21, and the location is in the northern hemisphere. However, ifthe day under consideration lies between March 21 and September 22, the hour angle at sunrise or sunset would be smaller in magnitude than the value given by Eq. (4.11) and would be obtained by substituting 6, = 90° in Eq. (4.8).