Decomposing global solar radiation into its diffuse and direct normal radiation

This work presents a model based on Radial Basis Function (RBF) to estimate the diffused solar radiation (DSR) and direct normal radiation (DNR) fractions of solar radiation from global solar radiation in a semiarid area in Algeria based on a database measured between 2013 and 2015. The data has been collected at Applied Research Unit for Renewable Energies, (URAER) at Ghardaia city situated in the south of Algeria. The experimental results show that RBF model estimates DNR and DSR with high performance. The difference between the measured and the predicted values show a normalised Root Mean Square Error (nRMSE) of 0.033 and 0.065 for DNR and DSR, respectively. The obtained values of Determination Coefficient (R²) and Correlation Coefficient (R) are: 97.3%, 98.60%, respectively for DNR and 88.89%, 91.12% For DSR.