In this paper, a neural network method for generating solar radiation synth
etic series is proposed and evaluated. In solar energy application fields s
uch as photovoltaic systems and solar heating systems, the need of long seq
uences of solar irradiation data is fundamental. Nevertheless those series
are not frequently available: in many locations the records are incomplete
or difficult to manage, whereas in other places there are no records at all
. Hence, many authors have proposed different methods to generate synthetic
series of irradiation trying to preserve some statistical properties of th
e recorded ones. The neural procedure shown here represents a simple altern
ative way to address this problem. A comparative study of the neural-based
synthetic series and series generated by other methods has been carried out
with the objective of demonstrating the universality and generalisation ca
pabilities of this new approach. The results show the good performance of t
his irradiation series generation method.