Use of radial basis functions for estimating monthly mean daily solar radiation

The present study utilizes the radial basis functions technique for the est imation of monthly mean daily values of solar radiation falling on horizont al surfaces and compares its performance with that of the multilayer percep trons network and a classical regression model. In this work, we use solar radiation data from 41 stations that are spread over the Kingdom of Saudi A rabia. The solar radiation data from 31 locations are used for training the neural networks and the data from the remaining 10 locations are used for testing the estimated values. However, the testing data were not used in th e modeling or training of the networks to give an indication of the perform ance of the system at unknown locations. Results indicate the viability of the radial basis for this kind of problem. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. A ll rights reserved.