A Simulation Model for Estimating Solar Radiation of Nasarawa, Nasarawa State – Nigeria

A simulation model for forecasting solar radiation in Nasarawa (Latitude of 8° 31' 45" N, Longitude of 7° 43' 27" E) was developed using empirically established Angstrom equation. The parameters measured were solar radiation intensity (W/m2) and hours of bright sunshine from 06.00 H to 18.00 H daily for the months of January to December 2013. The regression constants ‘a’ and ‘b’ were obtained to be 0.01 and 0.75 respectively. The performance of ‘a’ and ‘b’ were tested using Root mean square error (RMSE), Normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) and Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient (E).The developed empirical model for estimating solar radiation for Nasarawa was Hm = H0 [0.01 + 0.75 (n/N)] with a coefficient of correlation of 0.79. After establishing this model as being accurate for forecasting solar radiation in Nasarawa, a program in Visual basic. NET was written to this effect and a software was compiled using the program. This software titled “NasRadd” can be used with confidence on windows based systems to predict solar radiation in Nasarawa.