ASSESSMENT OF THE ACCURACY OF GENERATED METEOROLOGICAL DATA FOR USE IN SOLAR-ENERGY SIMULATION STUDIES

Simulations provide the only practical method for designing solar ener gy systems. Meteorological data are needed to drive the simulations. H owever, long-term meteorological data (e.g., 20 years) are not availab le in most locations so simulations often rely on a reduced set of dat a or data which have been synthesized with statistical models. Even in locations in which long-term data records exist, the computational re quirements of using these data for design purposes is significant so a reduced set of data (e.g., 1 year) is generally used. This study inve stigates the accuracy of using reduced and synthesized sets of meteoro logical models for solar applications. The accuracy estimates are made relative to estimates determined with over 20 years of hourly meteoro logical records.