need better method of determining solar irradiation

[CountZero]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone knows of a better way to determine the solar irradiation, at the Earth's surface, than with using ASHRAE's ClearSky Model, which uses a Cn constant to approximate the solar flux?

If you know of any, and are almost as simple to use as the ASHRAE model, I would very much appreciate any sources you could give me.

Thx

 

[25362]

Have you tried HICKS Standard Handbook of Engineering Calculations (McGraw-Hill) Section Two, Architectural Engineering, Solar Engineering ? The chapter's bibliography appears to include ASHRAE's handbook but others as well.

 

[Tunalover]

To answer your question I need to know more about what you're trying to do.
Tunalover

 

[MintJulep]

Check out Typical Meterological Year information available at

http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/tmy2/

It contains several solar radiation data elements

 

[CountZero]

Thanks for your replies.

25362, that book is pretty good. I have another called gieck and gieck (or geek and geek).

tunalover, basically I have a 1.2m parabolic dish and I'm trying to determine what the maximum useful energy can be extracted from this device. It's like a 2nd law efficiency.

Mintjulep, I found something very similar from the nasa website. It gives the maximum and the average values of solar insolation at any location on earth. Thank you, though , for your reply.

 

[IRstuff]

You can also try MIL-STD-810F, which in Method 505.4-14 shows the 99-percentile diurnal solar radiation load. The other is MIL-HDBK-310, which has a smidgen more data about lesser percentiles.

TTFN