Cebecauer T., Skoczek A., Šúri M., 2011.

The Effect of Solar Radiation Data Types on Calculation of Tilted And Suntracking Solar Radiation.
26th European Photovoltaics Solar Energy Conference, September 2011, Hamburg, Germany.

THE EFFECT OF SOLAR RADIATION DATA TYPES

ON CALCULATION OF TILTED AND SUNTRACKING SOLAR RADIATION

Tomáš Cebecauer, Artur Skoczek, Marcel Šúri

GeoModel Solar s.r.o., Pionierska 15, 831 02 Bratislava, Slovakia,
Tel: +421 2 492 12 422, fax: +421 2 492 12 423; corresponding author: tomas.cebecauer@geomodel.eu

ABSTRACT: Energy yield assessment of photovoltaic systems is inherently non-linear. The calculation chain starts with
simulation of solar radiation, where many factors are considered: sun’s position, terrain, properties of the atmosphere and
cloudiness to determine the absolute value of global irradiance and the ratio of diffuse and direct components. The ratio of direct
and diffuse components influences the global irradiance received by the inclined surface of PV modules, it changes during a day
and also during seasons and it is highly dependent on the geographical location. Therefore, optimally multiyear time series should
be used for proper modeling of energy performance of a PV generator. However, for historical reasons, several solar radiation
data products with different level of simplification are used in PV simulation tools – long-term monthly-averaged daily profiles,
synthetic time series, and typical meteorological years (TMYs). A new simplified approach is based on the statistical aggregation
of solar radiation into relevant groups (bins) according to distribution of irradiance values. This paper seeks to provide
a benchmark for four solar radiation data products used in the contemporary software packages for performance assessment of
photovoltaic systems. The results of calculation the in-plane irradiation show different performance of data products, when
compared to full time series, with error amplitude up to ±3%.

1. APPROACH
Photovoltaic systems perform have non-linear response to
weather parameters, especially global irradiance and air
temperature. The calculation chain starts with simulation
of solar radiation, which is determined by sun position,
properties of the atmosphere and cloudiness, which in turn
control the ratio of the diffuse and direct components.
This ratio changes dynamically during a day, type of
weather and during the year, and it is highly dependent on
a geographical location.
In PV simulation, the best results can be achieved using
high-resolution multiyear time series (e.g. several years of
15-minute data) of solar radiation with subsequent time-
integration of the calculated PV instantaneous values.
However, for historical reasons, PV simulation packages
use only simplified climate data products on the input: (i)
typical (average) daily profiles for each month, (ii)
synthetic time series derived from 12 monthly averages by
a stochastic weather generator, or (iii) Typical
Meteorological Year (TMY). The reduction of full time
series to any of the above mentioned data products has an
effect on the data accuracy, due to distorted ratio of
diffuse/global irradiance and probability distribution of air
temperature and solar radiation data pairs. Thus,
simplified data products may not describe appropriately
the regional climate, which in turn affects PV
performance simulation results.
This paper compares impact of four solar radiation data
products (including global horizontal irradiance and
diffuse horizontal irradiance) used in the contemporary
software packages for the assessment of tilted and sun-
tracking global radiation and evaluates the results for
different climates.
For calculation of irradiance impinging on a tilted or
suntracking receiver, diffuse and direct components have
to be known. These components can be directly measured
on a site; they can be calculated by clear-sky models (e.g.
SOLIS [1]) or most typically they are derived from global
irradiance by empirical or more advanced models, e.g. [2,
3]. Further, the models transposing diffuse horizontal to
diffuse tilted irradiance are needed to calculate irradiance
received by tilted or suntracking surfaces (e.g., the model
by Perez [4].
In this paper, we analyze three items:
1. We compare global horizontal irradiation as calculated
from the 6-years data and 17-years data.
2. We compare simulation results of annual global tilted
radiation as received from using different global
horizontal (GHI) and direct normal (DNI) radiation data
products (full time series, aggregated statistics, TMY,
monthly averaged daily profiles and synthetic time series
generated in PVSYST). As reference, time series covering
period of 1994 to 2010 of 15-minute and 30-minute GHI
and DNI irradiance data are used from the SolarGIS
database [5]. The in-plane global irradiation is calculated
for each data product using Perez tilted model and
compared to the result of using the full time series.
3. Next, the simulation in selected software packages was
carried out for three configurations: south-oriented tilted
surface at 30°, for one-axis tracker, and for two-axis
tracker. The gain of annual Global In-plane Irradiation
(GII) compared to Global Horizontal Irradiation (GHI) is
presented for eight different combinations of data and
models.
2. COMPARISON OF IRRADIATION DATA FROM
THE LAST 6 YEARS AND 17 YEARS
For the selected test sites, the comparison is shown
between Global Horizontal Irradiation calculated from the
recent 6 years (irradiance derived from Meteosat Second
Generation satellite) and the recent 17 years (combination

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Cebecauer T., Skoczek A., Šúri M., 2011. The Effect of Solar Radiation Data Types on Calculation of Tilted And Suntracking Solar Radiation.
26th European Photovoltaics Solar Energy Conference, September 2011, Hamburg, Germany.
of irradiance derived from Meteosat First and Second
Generation satellites).
The percentual difference of annual sums of Global
Horizontal Irradiance is shown in Fig. 4.
The negative values represent sites where 6-years sum
is higher than 17-years sum. It can be observed that the
majority of 6-years annual sums are higher than the
average of 17 years (last 6 years were sunnier), and the
difference is usually below 2%. Only 5 sites, out of 35
tested have higher value of the 17-year sum, but there is
no obvious geographical dependence in the distribution of
the results.
Fig 1. The difference between GHI calculated from
the last 6 and from the last 17 years of data. The negative
values represents sites where 6-years average is higher
than the average of 17 years.
3. USE OF SOLAR DATA PRODUCTS IN THE
SIMULATION PROGRAMS
The engineering software packages use various data
products to generate solar radiation for tilted and sun-
tracking surfaces. Some of those used in photovoltaics
are:
§ Average daily profiles based on long-term monthly
averaged values (e.g., ESRA, PVGIS, RETScreen);
§ Synthetic time series (e.g., Meteonorm, PVSYST)
§ Typical Meteorological Year (e.g., PVWATTS,
PVSYST, SAM);
§ Aggregated probability statistics (SolarGIS
pvPlanner)
§ Full multiyear series (e.g. SolarGIS offline version).
To obtain the most accurate simulations, the full multiyear
time series have to be used, typically as 15-, 30-minute or
hourly data. However, full time series are not used in most
of the available software packages – for historical reasons,
and also due to higher demand on computational
resources.
Calculation of in-plane solar radiation for tilted and sun-
tracking surfaces assumes availability of diffuse and
direct irradiance; but the resulting global in-plane
irradiance reacts non-linearly to these components.
Therefore data sets that provide good compromise
between the needs for computing power and accuracy are
still desirable. The characteristics of solar radiation data
products are presented below.
Fig. 2: Distribution of daily sums of global horizontal
irradiation within months does not follow Gaussian
(normal) distribution. Monthly averages most often do not
represent a “typical” weather (data for Payerne (CH)
and Seville (ES).
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Cebecauer T., Skoczek A., Šúri M., 2011. The Effect of Solar Radiation Data Types on Calculation of Tilted And Suntracking Solar Radiation.
26th European Photovoltaics Solar Energy Conference, September 2011, Hamburg, Germany.
1. Monthly averages of daily profiles
For fast estimate of solar potential of a site, monthly
averages of daily profiles are used. These are represented
by hourly or even 15-minute values. It is to be noted that
most often average value do not represent weather
patterns in a particular month. Fig. 2 shows distribution of
daily values of GHI for two different sites (Seville in
Spain and Payerne in Switzerland). It can be observed that
daily values within a month are not distributed normally,
usually there is strong asymmetry and monthly averages
do not represent the most typical days. In Payerne, for
example, the distribution of days in summer is very flat
with wide scatter of days, while for Seville the probability
distribution has clear peaks but it is notably asymmetric.
In the majority of cases, the value of median (the most
probable day) is higher than the average value.
This leads to an important statement that “average” day
occurs very rarely and aggregated statistics (median and
percentiles) better characterize climate of a site. In some
older software (e.g., RETScreen, ESRA, PVGIS),
algorithms are implemented, based on the assumption of
monthly-averaged sky conditions [6, 7, 8]) and the use of
the average daily profiles. This approach was developed
in times of limited data availability and computing
options, though they are still popular and widely used.
2. Synthetic hourly time series
A method for generating synthetic hourly time series from
long-term monthly averages by Aguiar and Collares-
Pereira [9] is another widely used approach. Synthetic
time series are practical as they generate hourly time
series from just 12 monthly values. The implementation
of the mathematical models for generating synthetic time
series may be of different complexity and performance in
various climates. The method used in this paper is
implemented in PVSYST.
3. Typical Meteorological Year
Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) constitutes another
approach to real climate characterization, and a number of
data set has been developed for several countries of
Europe and America. For decades, TMYs have been used
by engineers to simulate building energy performance or
solar systems. TMYs replace many years of data with a
single “typical” year, and they are used in applications
such as PVWATTS or PVSYST. TMYs are generally
built by assembling the most representative months from
the long-term time series into a typical composite year.
Weighting factors are applied to provide selective
emphasis on the meteorological parameters of interest
(including, but not limited to irradiance components).
TMYs can be constructed by many methods, optimally in
a way to represent real time climate as close as possible to
the needed applications - PV in our case. Most often,
TMY includes 12 fragments of real data that describe a
climate most realistically based on the given selection
criteria. The typical year is constructed on the monthly
basis, comparing months of individual years with long-
term monthly characteristics: cumulative distribution
function and mean. The selection of the most
representative month takes into account different weights
of individual weather parameters (e.g., GHI, DNI, air
temperature, humidity, wind speed, and wind direction)
and completeness of time series. The representative
months are concatenated into a typical year. In the
selection criteria, the higher weight is given to solar
radiation parameters, thus the RMY can be tuned for a
required solar energy application (PV, CPV or CSP).
4. Multi year time series
Times series will very likely dominate in future solar
energy simulations. These can be on-site measured or
satellite-derived data, or their combination. Satellite-
derived solar radiation data offer unsurpassed
performance in terms of availability, high-quality,
completeness, and timeliness of delivery. Nowadays
satellite-based solar time series can be calculated for
almost any location on the Earth, at high spatial and
temporal resolution, and they have a potential to represent
weather patterns for 13 up to 25 years. Compared to any
other data product, the strength of multiyear time series
resides in their ability to describe the probability of
occurrence of extreme and typical events for tuning the
design of solar energy systems and risk analysis of the
investment.
5. Aggregated statistics
For PV simulations, high resolution solar and air
temperature data pairs can be organized into percentiles
and statistical bins according to their probability of
occurrence. Organizing data this way aims to use more
effectively storage space for fast access and online
calculation for any selected site - enabling to consider
non-linearity in simulations and preserving speed and
accuracy of computation. The simulation is realized for
each bin separately, thus approximating different types of
weather (defined by the combination of GHI, DNI and air
temperature). This approach [10] allows significant
reduction of data volume while preserving information
about occurrence of different weather situations
individually for each month. This is especially important
for designing high-speed web-based calculators,
interactive maps and analytical tools.
4. INCLINED IRRADIATION CALCULATED FROM
THE STUDIED PRIMARY DATA PRODUCTS
To better understand the possible impact of a
particular data product in different climatic zones a
number of sites have been selected in Europe and Africa.
The distribution of the sites is shown in Fig. 3. For each
site a series of global inclined irradiances has been
calculated, with inclination varying from 0° to 90°, with a
step of 15°. The reference data are time series of satellite
derived GHI and DNI irradiance comprising of 17 years
data. The original time step of data is 30 minutes for years
1994-2004 (Meteosat First Generation) and 15 minutes
for years 2005-2010 (Meteosat Second Generation). The
data was linearly interpolated to work with the
homogenous set of 15-minute irradiance data.
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Cebecauer T., Skoczek A., Šúri M., 2011. The Effect of Solar Radiation Data Types on Calculation of Tilted And Suntracking Solar Radiation.
26th European Photovoltaics Solar Energy Conference, September 2011, Hamburg, Germany.

Fig 3. The distribution of the test sites.

The inclined radiation was calculated using:

• Monthly average profiles (15 minute resolution) -

AVERAGE,
• Monthly percentile distribution (15-minute
resolution) - PERCENTILE,
• Typical Meteorological Year (hourly resolution) –
TMY,
• Synthetically generated one year of data using
monthly averages of GHI and diffuse radiation
(hourly resolution) using PVSYST method –
SYNTHETIC TS.
The inclined irradiation was calculated for each data
product using Perez tilted model. The sum of inclined
radiation was compared to corresponding sum of inclined
radiation calculated form primary full time 15-minute
time series data as a reference.
The results show that energy yield assessment is sensitive
to the selection of solar radiation data product. The data
representation and choice of the model significantly
influence the calculated in-plane irradiation output. The
differences between the approaches are not systematic,
but vary between the sites. If full time series are
considered as a reference, as they represent the most
detailed description of the site climate conditions, then
both the TMY and aggregated statistics give results very
similar to the reference. The differences are below 1% in
most cases for all configurations and sites, and only in the
extreme situations this threshold is exceeded.
The aggregated statistics in the form of percentiles shows
clear geographical pattern – with increasing latitude the
inclined radiation becomes slightly overestimated. But the
difference from time series is small and maximum of
1.5% is found only for vertical surfaces. For the surfaces Fig 4. Deviation of simulated inclined irradiation of
close to optimum angle the difference is below 1%. different data products compared to inclined irradiance
calculated from full time series. Tilt angles: 0, 15, 30, 45,
60, 75, 90.

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Cebecauer T., Skoczek A., Šúri M., 2011. The Effect of Solar Radiation Data Types on Calculation of Tilted And Suntracking Solar Radiation.
26th European Photovoltaics Solar Energy Conference, September 2011, Hamburg, Germany.

The TMY data product performs slightly worse than Four sites are analyzed with different climate conditions.
aggregated statistics. The deviation reaches the level of Fig. 5 shows that the data representation and the choice of
the 1.5% more, but similarly to the previous product this the model determine the calculated of the in-plane
occurs for vertical position. No geographical pattern was radiation.
found and both overestimation and underestimation of
inclined irradiation is present. These TMY results are
probably linked to the way of data product creation, where
assimilation of months (that mostly resemble the average
and frequency distribution of full time series) from
various years may lead to slightly different characteristics
of the resulting data products.
When monthly-averaged daily profiles are used, the in-
plane irradiation becomes overestimated in all locations.
The deviation in extreme cases surpasses the 2.5%, the
highest overestimation is found in European sites and
Central Africa.
The synthetic data series reach highest differences (over
3.0%), especially in extreme cases of vertical surfaces.
The difference to the use of multiple time series is
relatively high with both positive and negative amplitude
(no geographical pattern). The monthly averages of global
and diffuse irradiation provide too simplified solar
characterization of a site and the results confirm that
synthetic data generator has been tuned for the climate of
Central, West Europe and for Mediterranean Europe. The
generator fails to produce higher errors in climate regions
in North Europe and South of the Mediterranean region. It
is possible that more complex methods of synthetic data
generation may provide better results.

5. SIMULATION USING DIFFERENT MODELS

Simulation shows the results when using different data
products: full time series, TMY, aggregated statistics,
long-term averaged daily profiles, synthetic time series
and different implementations of in-plane solar radiation
models (SolarGIS, PVGIS and PVSYST) for three
configurations: South oriented tilted at 30°, one-axis
tracking and for two axis tracking system.
The gain of Global In-plane Irradiation compared to
Global Horizontal Irradiation is presented for eight
different combinations of data products and numerical
models. All data are derived from the SolarGIS satellite-
based database:
§ A. Time series of 15-minute data for 6 years,
SolarGIS [10] in-plane model. This simulation is
considered as a reference
§ B. Typical Meteorological Year, hourly data,
SolarGIS in-plane model
§ C. Aggregated statistics, 15-minute data, SolarGIS
in-plane model
§ D. Average monthly profiles, 15-minute data,
SolarGIS in-plane model
§ E. Synthetic hourly data, PVSYST in-plane model –
synthetic data are derived from monthly averages of
global and diffuse and irradiation in PVSYST
§ F. PVGIS CM-SAF satellite-based data, 12 monthly
averages, PVGIS in-plane model
§ G. PVGIS-3 interpolated ground station data, 12
monthly averages, PVGIS in-plane model [7, 11]
Fig. 5: Comparison of different data aggregations and in-
plain models. Irradiance gain in comparison to horizontal
plane (GHI) for 2 axis tracker, 1 axis tracker with rotation
axis oriented north-south and inclined at an angle of 30°
and a fix plane inclined at angle of 30°.
The simulation of in-plane global irradiation using various
packages with different implementation of the inclined
radiation calculation shows even higher difference (Fig. 5)
when compared to the Fig. 4. It is interesting to note that
horizontal-to-inclined surface gains for trackers obtained
from synthetic dataset generated by PVSYST are higher
than for the reference data input. On the other hand, these
gains are lower for a fixed inclined surface. This may be a
result of distorted statistics of ratio DIF/GHI when using
synthetically-generated data. The difference of in-plane
radiation from synthetic data calculated by SolarGIS and
PVSYST models points to possible differences in the
applied tilted irradiance model.

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Cebecauer T., Skoczek A., Šúri M., 2011. The Effect of Solar Radiation Data Types on Calculation of Tilted And Suntracking Solar Radiation.
26th European Photovoltaics Solar Energy Conference, September 2011, Hamburg, Germany.

6. CONCLUSIONS
This contribution confirms some of the previous partial
findings and by the more detailed analysis aims to trigger
discussion about the impacts on the data models on the
accuracy of simulation of the PV systems performance.
Three key findings have been observed:
• GHI calculated from the last 6 years of data
overestimates the long-term average calculated from
the last 17 years of data, typically by 2%;
• In the next step, we compared a calculation of in-
plane global irradiation for South-facing PV array,
fixed-mounted at an angle from 0 to 90 degrees using
different data products. It is considered that the
reference calculation is based on the use of full time
series. The analysis of four data sources has shown
that the closest to the full time series is aggregated
statistics, followed by TMY. TMY data may be
generated using various approaches and therefore the
results are method-dependent. The long-term
monthly-averaged daily profiles and synthetic time
series show higher deviation with changing
geographic pattern (up to ±3%). Monthly averaged
daily profiles have tendency to generate systematic
error. In case of synthetic data generation, the results
may depend on the method used (in this study the
method implemented in PVSYST).
• Comparison of 8 combinations of data products, data
types, representation period, and software
implementation shows that deviations when
comparing various tracking system and model
implementation can result in deviations of the annual
global in-pane irradiation. This is valid especially for
older data formats, such as synthetic time series and
long-term monthly-averaged long-term daily
profiles. The best performance has been found with
the statistically aggregated solar radiation, and this
data representation has a good potential for fast
calculations at marginal compromises in the quality
(error is less than ±0.5).
The above-mentioned differences in annual value of
global irradiation affect energy simulation in PV models,
which can contribute by another 2% of uncertainty or
more.
[5.] Cebecauer T., Šúri M., Perez R., 2010. High
performance MSG satellite model for operational
solar energy applications, ASES National Solar
Conference, Phoenix, USA.
[6.] ESRA, 2000. Greif J., Scharmer K., Eds., European
Solar Radiation Atlas, 4th edition. Scientific
advisors: Dogniaux R., and Page J.; Authors: Wald
L., Albuisson M., Czeplak G., Bourges B., Aguiar
R., Lund H., Joukoff A., Terzenbach U., Beyer H.-
G., Borisenko E. P., Paris: Presses de l'Ecole des
Mines de Paris
[7.] Šúri M., Huld T., Cebecauer T., Dunlop E.D., 2008.
Geographic Aspects of Photovoltaics in Europe:
Contribution of the PVGIS Web Site. IEEE Journal
of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations
and Remote Sensing, 1, 34-41.
[8.] RETScreen, 2010. Clean Energy Project Analysis
Software, http://www.retscreen.net/
[9.] Aguiar R., Collares-Pereira M., 1992. TAG: a time-
dependent, autoregressive, Gaussian model for
generating synthetic hourly radiation. Solar Energy,
49, 167–174.
[10.] Šúri M., Cebecauer T., Skoczek A., SolarGIS: solar
data and online applications for PV planning and
performance assessment. Proceeding of the
EUPVSEC 2011 Conference, Hamburg, Germany,
Sept 2011.
[11.] Muneer, T., 1990, Solar radiation model for Europe.
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