Applied Energy 71 (2002) 307319

www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

Solar radiation estimation using articial

neural networks
Atsu S.S. Dorvloa,*, Joseph A. Jervaseb, Ali Al-Lawatib
a
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, College of Science, Sultan Qaboos University,
PO Box 36, Al-Khod, Muscat, Oman 123
b
Information Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University,
PO Box 33 Al-Khod, Muscat, Oman 123

Received 30 May 2001; accepted 9 February 2002

Abstract
Articial Neural Network Methods are discussed for estimating solar radiation by rst
estimating the clearness index. Radial Basis Functions, RBF, and Multilayer Perceptron,
MLP, models have been investigated using long-term data from eight stations in Oman. It is
shown that both the RBF and MLP models performed well based on the root-mean-square
error between the observed and estimated solar radiations. However, the RBF models are pre-
ferred since they require less computing power. The RBF model, obtained by training with data
from the meteorological stations at Masirah, Salalah, Seeb, Sur, Fahud and Sohar, and testing
with those from Buraimi and Marmul, was the best. This model can be used to estimate the
solar radiation at any location in Oman. # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Solar radiation; Radial basis functions; Articial neural networks; Clearness index

1. Introduction

Solar energy is the portion of the suns energy available at the earths surface for
useful applications, such as raising the temperature of water or exciting electrons in
a photovoltaic cell, in addition to supplying energy to natural processes like photo-
synthesis. This energy is free, clean and abundant in most places throughout the
year. Its eective harnessing and use are of importance to the world, especially at the

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-968-515-400; fax: +968-513-415.

E-mail addresses: atsu@squ.edu.om (A.S.S. Dorvlo), jervase@squ.edu.om (J.A. Jervase), lawati@
squ.edu.om (A. Al-Lawati).

0306-2619/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0306-2619(02)00016-8
308 A.S.S. Dorvlo et al. / Applied Energy 71 (2002) 307319

Nomenclature

ANN Articial Neural Network

bo data independent bias term variable at output node
b1 j bias term applied to jth neuron of hidden layer
b2 j bias term applied to output layer neuron
H observed solar radiation
H estimated solar radiation
Ho maximum solar radiation
M number of hidden layer neurons
MLP Multilayer Perceptron
RBF Radial Basis Function
S sunshine hours
So maximum sunshine hours
W1 k; j weight between kth input and jth summation node of hidden layer
W2 j weight between jth hidden layer neuron and output summation node
 latitude of location
 suns declination at location
j x output of jth node in hidden layer

time of high fossil fuel costs and the degradation of the atmosphere by the use of
these fossil fuels.
Solar radiation data provide information on how much of the suns energy strikes
a surface at a location on earth during a particular time period. These data are
needed for eective research into solar-energy utilization. Due to the cost and di-
culty in measurement, these data are not readily available [1,2]. Therefore, there is
the need to develop alternative ways of generating these data.
The aim of the present work is to develop articial neural network (ANN) models
that can be used to estimate solar radiation at any given location in Oman based on
its latitude, longitude, altitude, sunshine hours and the month of the year. This can
be viewed as a multivariable interpolation problem in which it is required to esti-
mate the function relating the input to the output using a set of input-output data.
This kind of problem is referred to in the literature by dierent names such as non-
parametric regression, function approximation and supervised learning in neural
network terminology [3]. Articial neural networks and in particular Radial Basis
Function (RBF) networks have been successfully used in tackling such problems [4].
Several other models have been developed for estimating solar radiation for parti-
cular stations. Regression-type models were rst applied to this problem by Ang-
strom [5] based on sunshine duration. This model was developed for other locations
by Akinoglu and Ecevit [6], Newland [7], Gopinathan [8] and Rietveld [9]. Some
regression models incorporating trigonometric functions have been proposed by
Dorvlo and Ampratwum [10] and Coppolino [2]. Radiation data being time depen-
dent have also been modeled using harmonic analysis methods by Dorvlo and
 A.S.S. Dorvlo et al. / Applied Energy 71 (2002) 307319 309

Ampratwum [11], Herrero [12], Philips [13]. Mohandes et al. [14] have compared
radial basis function methods with the regression models for Saudi stations and
found the radial basis method models to be better than the regression models. Hokoi
et al. [15] used a stationary autoregressive moving average model (ARMA) of order
three to model hourly solar radiation while Mora-Lopez and Sidrach-de-Cardona
[16] also used an ARMA model of order unity to model monthly solar radiation
data. Sfetsos and Coonick [17] used articial intelligence techniques for forecasting
hourly solar radiations. All these models are however location dependent. We aim to
develop neural network based models for estimating solar radiation in those places
in Oman that do not have measuring instruments.

2. Articial neural networks for solar radiation estimation

Neurons are the basic elements of the human brain. The basic function of these
neurons is to provide us with the ability to apply our previous experiences to our
actions [1820]. Articial Neural Networks (ANNs) are computing algorithms that
mimic the four basic functions of these biological neurons. These functions receive
inputs from other neurons or sources, combine them, perform operations on the
result and output the nal result [20]. What makes ANNs exciting is the fact that
once a network has been set up, it can learn in a self-organizing way that emulates
the brain functions such as pattern recognition, classication, and optimization [18
22].
An ANN is characterized by its architecture, training or learning algorithm and
activation function. The architecture describes the connections between the neurons.
It consists of an input layer, an output layer and generally, one or more hidden
layers in-between as depicted in Fig. 1. Fig. 1 shows one of the commonly used
networks, namely, the layered feed-forward neural network with one hidden layer.

Fig. 1. A typical layered feed-forward neural network.

310 A.S.S. Dorvlo et al. / Applied Energy 71 (2002) 307319

The layers in these networks are interconnected by communication links that are
associated with weights that dictate the eect on the information passing through
them. These weights are determined by the learning algorithms, which lead to the
categorization of the ANNs as [21]:

 Fixed weight ANNs: these do not need any kind of learning.

 Unsupervised ANNs: these networks are trained (weights are adjusted) based
on input data only. The networks learn to adapt using experience gained
from previous inputs.
 Supervised ANNs: These are the most commonly used ANNs. In these net-
works, the system makes use of both input and output data. The weights are
updated for every set of input/output data. The multilayer perceptron and
radial basis function articial neural networks fall into this category.

The activation function, on the other hand, relates the output of a neuron to its
input based on the neurons input activity level. Some of the commonly used func-
tions include the threshold function, piece-wise linear function, sigmoid function [18]
and the Gaussian function. Each activation function in an ANN is usually associated
with a bias. This bias may be determined using the training algorithm by considering
it as a weight with a xed input. A brief introduction to RBF and MLP networks for
solar radiation estimation follows.

2.1. A. RBF Network Implementation

The radial basis function network consists of an input layer, an output layer and
usually but not necessarily one hidden layer [3]. The architecture used is shown in Fig. 2.
The activation function in the hidden layer of the RBF network is Gaussian, that
is characterized by its response that decreases monotonically with distance from a
central point.

Fig. 2. A radial basis function (RBF) neural network.

 A.S.S. Dorvlo et al. / Applied Energy 71 (2002) 307319 311

The problem of estimating solar radiation at a given location based on its latitude,
longitude, altitude, sunshine ratio and the month of the year may be considered as a
multivariable interpolation one. This entails nding an approximating function H(x)
representing solar radiation in which x is an N-dimensional vector. In this case, the
x components are the independent variables, namely, latitude, longitude, altitude,
sunshine ratio and the month of the year (i.e. N=5). In RBF networks, H(x) is
expressed as a linear combination of multivariate Gaussian basis functions [18,23].
Thus

X
M
Hx Wj j x bo 1
j1

where
" #
X5
1
j x exp  2
xj  ckj 2 2
j1
2 j

j x is the output of the jth node in the hidden layer (see Fig. 2),
ckj is the center of the jth RBF node for the kth input variable xk ,
j is the width of the Gaussian function,
Wj is the weight between jth RBF unit and output layer neuron,
bo is the bias term i.e. data independent variable at output node,
M is the number of hidden layer neurons.

The learning process of a radial basis function network involves using the input-
output data to determine the parameters ckj , j and Wj . One of the techniques used
to obtain these parameters is based on assuming xed radial-basis functions. In
this method, the centers are randomly selected from the training data set. On the
other hand, the width of the Gaussian radial basis function is expressed in terms
of the maximum distance between the chosen center d and the number of centers M
as
d
j p 3
2M
With ckj and j specied for all the hidden nodes, it remains to determine the
weights.These can be computed using multiple linear regression techniques [23]. This
involves processing the P training patterns through M hidden nodes to generate an
MP matrix, Q, say. The aim is to nd the weights vector W (1M vector) such
that the error between the computed output vector S (1P vector) and the target
output vector, T, is minimum. In matrix form, this translates to minimizing

kT  Sk kT  WQk 4

where kk

represents the Euclidean norm.
312 A.S.S. Dorvlo et al. / Applied Energy 71 (2002) 307319

Fig. 3. A multilayer perceptron (MLP) feed-forward neural network.

The least-squares solution of (4) for the vector W can be found using the pseudo-
inverse of Q as follows

W TQT QQT 1 5

The Matlab Neural Network Toolbox was used for the implementation of the radial
basis function network [24]. The Matlab function newrb was used [25]. Based on a
given width (spread), this function iteratively adds one neuron at a time to the net-
work until the sum-squared error falls below a specied error goal or a maximum
number of neurons is attained.

2.2. MLP Network Implementation

The multilayer perceptron network consists of an input layer, an output layer and
usually one or more hidden layers. The architecture used in this work, shown in
Fig. 3, has an input layer of ve inputs, one hidden layer with a sigmoidal activation
function, , dened by the logistic function

1
 6
1 expy

where y is the corresponding input.

For the output layer, a linear activation function was used in the implementation.
The approximating function H(x), representing solar radiation is dened as
" #
X
M
Hx Aj xW2 j b2 1 7
j1

where " #
X
5
Aj x  xkW1 k; j b1 j 8
k1
 A.S.S. Dorvlo et al. / Applied Energy 71 (2002) 307319 313

is the linear activation function at the output layer (see Fig. 3),
W1(k,j) is the weight between kth input and jth summation hidden layer node,
W2( j) is the weight between jth hidden layer neuron and output summation node,
b1( j) is the bias term applied to the jth hidden layer neuron,
b2(1) is the bias term applied to the output layer neuron,
x(k) is the kth element of the input vector x,
M is the number of hidden layer neurons.

The learning process of the MLP network involves using the input-output data to
determine the weights and biases. One of the techniques used to obtain these para-
meters is the backpropagation algorithm [18]. In this method, the weights and biases
are adjusted iteratively to achieve a minimum specied mean square error between
the network output and target value.
The Matlab Neural Network Toolbox was again used for the implementation of
the MLP network. For the training of the neural network, the Bayesian regulation
backpropagation algorithm trainbr was used. This training function updates the
weights and bias values according to Levenberg-Marquardt optimization [26]. It
minimizes a linear combination of squared errors and weights, and then uses
Bayesian regularization to determine the correct combination that results in a
network that generalizes satisfactorily.

3. Data

The Sultanate of Oman lies between latitude 16 400 N and 26 200 N and long-
itudes 51 500 E and 59 400 E which is in the solar belt. The maximum radiation, Ho,
levels expected in Oman is between 23.32 MJ/m2/day and 40.31 MJ/m2/day. The
theoretical sunshine duration, So, is given by So 2=15cos1 tantan, where a
and d represent respectively the latitude and declination of a location. For Oman,
So, ranges between 10.5 hours and 13.5 hours a day. The climatic conditions are
mainly desert in the north and subtropical in the far south. The average solar
radiation in Oman is 18.71 MJ/m2/day with a standard deviation of 4.0 MJ/m2/day,
and the daily sunshine duration is between 8.0 and 20.5 hours [27]. Oman has a great
potential for solar energy harnessing because of the long daily duration of sunshine
hours and high levels of solar radiation.
There are at the moment 25 weather stations in Oman that routinely measure cli-
matic parameters like solar radiation, sunshine hours, temperature, rainfall, atmo-
spheric pressure, temperature and humidity. However, not all the stations measure
all these parameters, especially solar radiation. Most stations are relatively new and
therefore have not accumulated any long-term data yet. In addition, there are large
areas of Oman that do not have any weather stations.
The raw data for this study were obtained through personal communication from
the Directorate General of Civil Aviation and Meteorology. However, monthly
summaries are published annually by the Oman Ministry of Transportation and
Housing [28]. Table 1 gives the geographical details of the location of the stations
314 A.S.S. Dorvlo et al. / Applied Energy 71 (2002) 307319

Table 1
Average daily sunshine duration, solar radiation and location of meteorological stations in Oman con-
sidered in the study

Station Location Latitude Longitude Altitude Sunshine durationa Solar radiationa

no. (N) (E) (m) (hours) (MJ/m2/day)

1 Sohar 24 280 56 380 3.63 9.28 (2.31) 21.01 (5.30)

2 Fahud 22 210 56 290 170.00 9.98 (1.93) 20.08 (4.35)
3 Sur 22 320 59 280 13.77 9.63 (2.12) 15.18 (4.19)
4 Seeb 23 350 58 170 8.40 9.75 (2.21) 19.59 (4.75)
5 Salalah 17 020 54 050 20.00 7.96 (3.84) 16.37 (4.04)
6 Masirah 20 400 58 540 18.80 9.49 (2.04) 17.32 (3.71)
7 Marmul 18 080 55 110 269.00 10.11 (1.38) 22.21 (2.23)
8 Buraimi 24 140 55 470 296.89 10.30 (1.91) 19.25 (4.60)
a
Values between brackets represent the standard deviation.

Table 2
Summary of observed clearness index (H/Ho) and sunshine ratios (S/So) used as part of the input for
training and validation of the neural networks

Month S/So H/Ho S/So H/Ho S/So H/Ho S/So H/Ho

Buraimi Seeb Masirah Fahud

1 0.8077 0.5832 0.7814 0.5594 0.8597 0.5282 0.7927 0.6194

2 0.7734 0.5796 0.7867 0.5852 0.8447 0.5231 0.7733 0.5965
3 0.7838 0.5695 0.7178 0.5713 0.7875 0.5412 0.7850 0.5901
4 0.8392 0.5890 0.7745 0.5957 0.8003 0.5358 0.8263 0.6106
5 0.8980 0.6197 0.8695 0.6162 0.8762 0.5462 0.8785 0.6304
6 0.9098 0.5902 0.8372 0.6128 0.7523 0.4995 0.8864 0.6109
7 0.9064 0.5346 0.7394 0.5560 0.5985 0.4312 0.8490 0.5663
8 0.9014 0.5721 0.7809 0.5661 0.6492 0.4707 0.8499 0.5786
9 0.9097 0.6181 0.8481 0.6047 0.7490 0.4997 0.8734 0.6169
10 0.9154 0.6358 0.8965 0.6204 0.8769 0.5431 0.8899 0.6265
11 0.9056 0.6031 0.8978 0.6192 0.9028 0.5458 0.8777 0.6134
12 0.8523 0.5783 0.8336 0.5830 0.8541 0.5245 0.7420 0.6015
Marmul Sur Salalah Sohar

1 0.8401 0.6862 0.7907 0.4654 0.8614 0.5466 0.7697 0.5869

2 0.8448 0.6971 0.8167 0.4531 0.8108 0.5223 0.7702 0.6412
3 0.8553 0.6773 0.7226 0.4521 0.7860 0.5319 0.6830 0.5874
4 0.8536 0.6660 0.8025 0.4632 0.8265 0.5334 0.7492 0.6595
5 0.8679 0.6467 0.8529 0.4684 0.8635 0.5382 0.8377 0.6946
6 0.8007 0.5766 0.8213 0.4411 0.5085 0.4629 0.7975 0.6763
7 0.7621 0.5424 0.6639 0.3998 0.1447 0.3172 0.6673 0.6177
8 0.8206 0.5923 0.7390 0.4293 0.1074 0.2776 0.6925 0.6305
9 0.8757 0.6644 0.8214 0.4539 0.4676 0.4201 0.7843 0.6657
10 0.8902 0.7007 0.8831 0.4917 0.8809 0.5476 0.8620 0.6596
11 0.8613 0.6954 0.9008 0.4947 0.8897 0.5541 0.8871 0.6356
12 0.8499 0.6698 0.8278 0.4608 0.8680 0.5432 0.8126 0.6294
 A.S.S. Dorvlo et al. / Applied Energy 71 (2002) 307319 315

Table 3
RMSE of solar radiation H in MJ/m2/day for all the models developed

Model no. Training set Validating set MLP-1a MLP-2a MLP-3a RBF

1 1,2,3,4,5,6 7,8 3.30 5.71 1.51 4.04

2 1,2,3,4,5,7 6,8 3.44 4.70 1.58 2.86
3 1,2,3,4,5,8 6,7 5.25 6.88 5.95 3.28
4 1,2,3,4,6,7 5,8 2.75 1.90 1.60 1.71
5 1,2,3,4,6,8 5,7 3.00 2.96 3.25 2.36
6 1,2,3,4,7,8 5,6 4.54 2.27 5.16 2.13
7 1,2,3,5,6,7 4,8 2.72 2.66 1.46 9.58
8 1,2,3,5,6,8 4,7 7.15 3.58 3.34 3.67
9 1,2,3,5,7,8 4,6 5.08 4.47 4.57 3.96
10 1,2,3,6,7,8 4,5 3.67 5.66 3.10 3.80
11 1,2,4,5,6,7 3,8 4.76 3.78 4.16 8.96
12 1,2,4,5,6,8 3,7 4.65 2.18 1.88 10.08
13 1,2,4,5,7,8 3,6 2.38 5.21 3.15 6.47
14 1,2,4,6,7,8 3,5 5.18 8.08 5.69 3.12
15 1,2,5,6,7,8 3,4 3.40 6.25 1.35 1.75
16 1,3,4,5,6,7 2,8 2.12 3.00 2.72 1.67
17 1,3,4,5,6,8 2,7 3.52 6.09 3.66 1.62
18 1,3,4,5,7,8 2,6 3.66 4.92 2.74 2.27
19 1,3,4,6,7,8 2,5 5.69 3.94 4.03 3.07
20 1,3,5,6,7,8 2,4 5.07 7.84 2.76 4.02
21 1,4,5,6,7,8 2,3 5.29 6.64 6.06 2.90
22 2,3,4,5,6,7 1,8 7.16 6.69 8.12 3.58
23 2,3,4,5,6,8 1,7 2.76 2.19 2.01 1.97
24 2,3,4,5,7,8 1,6 1.01 2.57 2.06 1.57
25 2,3,4,6,7,8 1,5 9.41 8.21 3.81 5.01
26 2,3,5,6,7,8 1,4 2.58 3.19 2.63 1.89
27 2,4,5,6,7,8 1,3 2.64 2.32 3.22 3.66
28 3,4,5,6,7,8 1,2 1.66 1.78 3.52 0.83
a
MLP-i represents a multilayer perceptron network with i hidden layers.

used in this study. These eight stations, Buraimi, Fahud, Marmul, Masirah, Salalah,
Seeb, Sohar and Sur have long term data of ten years or more. There is a con-
centration of stations in the north and south of the country. The central portion of
the country which is very sparsely populated has only three stations. Table 2 gives
the clearness index which is the ratio of the average daily solar radiation, H, and the
daily maximum radiation, Ho, and sunshine ratio, i.e. the ratio of the average daily
sunshine hours, S, and the theoretical sunshine duration, So, by month for all the
eight stations in the study.

4. Implementation and results

Data from the eight stations averaged over at least ten years (19861998) were
used to train and validate the MLP neural networks and an RBF network. The
316 A.S.S. Dorvlo et al. / Applied Energy 71 (2002) 307319

input parameters were latitude, longitude, altitude, sunshine ratio, (S/So) and month
of year. The output parameter is the clearness index (H/Ho). The estimated solar
radiation was obtained by multiplying the estimated clearness index by Ho. The data
used to train and validate are provided in Tables 1 and 2. Data from six stations
were used to train the networks and the data from the remaining 2 stations were
used for the validation of the models. To arrive at the best possible model, all pos-
sible combinations of 6 out of 8 stations data, a total of 28 combinations, were used
in training the networks and the remaining two for validation. MLP networks with

Fig. 4. Solar radiation as measured and estimated using the Radial Basis Function network model 28.
 A.S.S. Dorvlo et al. / Applied Energy 71 (2002) 307319 317

1, 2 and 3 hidden layers were implemented. The size of the root mean square error,
RMSE, was used to determine the best models. The RMSE, is dened as
q
P
H^ i Hi 2 ^ i is the esti-
RMSE n , where Hi is the measured solar radiation and H

mated solar radiation. The computed RMSEs are shown in Table 3. All the four
networks performed very well. The range of errors for the RBF networks was 0.83 to
10.08 MJ/m2/day, while the range of errors for MLP networks was 1.01 to 9.41 MJ/
m2/day. A KruskalWallis k-sample test showed no signicant dierence between

Fig. 5. Solar radiation as measured and estimated using the Multilayer Perceptron network model 15.
318 A.S.S. Dorvlo et al. / Applied Energy 71 (2002) 307319

the networks (p-value=0.159). However, a least signicant dierence comparison

showed that the MLP networks with 2 and 3 hidden layers are dierent
(p-value=0.030). Mohandes et al. [14] also reported mixed results with none of the
networks having an edge in terms of the mean absolute percentage error. The per-
formances of the networks are similar but we would recommend the use of the RBF
network because it does not need as much computing power as the MLP networks.
Model #28 which results from training with stations Buraimi, Marmul, Masirah,
Salalah, Seeb and Sur and validating with stations Fahud and Sohar gave the
smallest RMSE (0.83 MJ/m2/day) and is judged the best model using the RBF net-
work. The results were obtained using Matlab Neural Toolbox function newrb [25]
with the spread constant of the Gaussian function set to 0.75 and training goal of
sum-squared errors set to 0.008. However, among the MLP networks, the one which
utilizes 3 hidden layers is judged the best because its mean and standard deviation of
the root mean square errors were the lowest. For the MLP network, model #15
which results from training using stations Sohar, Fahud, Salalah, Masirah and
Marmul and validating with stations Seeb and Sur was the best (RMSE=1.35 MJ/
m2/day). The results were obtained using Matlab Neural Toolbox function trainbr
[25] with the training goal of sum-squared errors set to 0.008.
Fig. 4 shows the measured and estimated solar radiation using the model that
resulted in the minimum overall RMSE value of 0.83 MJ/m2/day, namely, model
#28 for the RBF network. Fig. 5 shows results obtained for model #15 which resul-
ted in the minimum overall RMSE of 1.01 MJ/m2/day for the MLP network. It is
apparent from Figs. 4 and 5 that the training sets show almost a perfect t as
expected, since the data were used to train the networks.

5. Conclusion

We have demonstrated the use of neural network methods in modeling solar

radiation. Both the Radial Basis Function (RBF) and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP)
networks are good in modeling this set of data. However, the RBF is to be preferred
because it requires less computing power and time. The models presented here can
be used to predict solar radiation in those locations in the Sultanate of Oman where
measurements of sunshine hours are available in addition to the latitude, longitude
and altitude measurements of the location.

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