Solar and Coincident Weather Data for Large Scale Solar Deployment in Australasia
Abstract
The Australian Solar Radiation Data Handbook (ASRDH) was first published in 1988 (Frick et al, 1988) following the pioneering work of Paltridge and Proctor (1976) and its preparation for wider use by Roy and Miller (1980). Although it also calculates the irradiation of a range of engineering and architectural surfaces, each edition of this Handbook is different from their simpler predecessors - the so-called “Spencer Tables” (Spencer, 1974 and later) - that use completely clear skies to calculate irradiation levels. The “Spencer Tables” provide equivalent information for architectural surfaces for the specific case of a cloudless sky. By contrast, the data used for this Handbook are all statistical values (means and frequencies of occurrence) that account for the reduction, particularly in beam radiation, caused by actual cloud conditions. Similarly, in the early years, solar position and shading design were tackled with no explicit detail on the irradiation energy involved, as in Spencer and Philips (1983). Alas, that first edition 1988 of the ASRDH incorporated a gross error in the algorithm for solar position that made it highly inaccurate for high tilt surfaces. The error was first revealed by Lee (1991) in “Solar Progress”, the quarterly journal of the Australian and New Zealand Solar Energy Society (ANZSES, the forerunner of AuSES) and subsequently explained (Frick and Leadbeater, 1992). The error was corrected later in 1992 with an interim 51⁄4 inch floppy disk ASRDH 2nd edition and a fully revised third edition subsequently published by the Energy Research and Development Corporation (ERDC), Canberra, (Lee et al, 1995). That edition incorporated the best available anisotropic sky algorithms for interpreting global, diffuse and direct solar measurements into the required architectural and design tables for a wide range of fixed and sun tracking surfaces.