Three-dimensional SOlar RAdiation Model (SORAM) and its application to 3-D urban planning

The aim of this work is to evaluate the potential direct and diffuse solar radiation aggregated at a point location in an urban area. With the three-dimensional (3D) SOlar RAdiation Model (SORAM) presented here, the paper makes three key contributions. Firstly, the model augments the Perez et al. (1990) model by accounting for the aggregated contribution of diffuse radiation using ray-tracing methods. Secondly, the model demonstrates the use of a randomly generated city building distribution and terrain map to simulate the 3D urban solar radiation exposure at any time or over a selected time period. Thirdly, we validate our results using empirical sunlight data measured from a real urban area (Sheffield Solar Farm), and also validate our results against the Perez et al. (1990) model under conditions of no shading. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.