Simple solar radiation modelling for different cloud types and climatologies

The instantaneous Cloud Fraction Coverage (iCFC) and Cloud Type (iCTY) products of the Climate Monitoring Satellite Application Facility are used to develop simple relationships between solar global irradiance and cloud amount and types. Radiometric measurements from five Romanian weather stations are used. Solar radiation relationships are proposed for clear sky, overcast sky and cloudy sky. A procedure to average the iCTY data is proposed, and eight classes of averaged iCTY values are considered. Two procedures are used to define the overcast sky and two cloudy sky solar radiation models are considered. Overcast skies consisting of stratiform clouds (CTY classes 8 to 14) are the most challenging when solar radiation modelling is considered. The overcast sky models have lower accuracy at high irradiance values. The best cloudy sky model has relative root mean square error values ranging between 17.6 % (for CTY classes 1 to 4) and 67.6 % (for CTY classes 12 to 14). For most CTY classes, the model performs worse at intermediate irradiance values.