Validation and Simulation of Hourly Global Solar Radiation of Cities from each of the Five Indian Zones

The intent of our research paper is bringing to the attention the dire need of superseding our current energy source with solar energy. This is required for not just the major but minor cities of India as well. As we know India being a tropical country receives favorable amount of solar radiation in every nook and corner. This makes it possible to adapt solar energy as one of the main energy source. But such an adaptation requires time and thorough research. We can start by selecting the zones which receive enough amount of solar radiation so that it can be harnessed to generate power. This paper is a noble attempt in that direction. To calculate the Average Hourly Global Solar Radiation for each month of some cities viz. Vishakhapatnam (east zone), Port Blair (south zone), Pune (west zone), New Delhi (north zone), and Nagpur (central zone), the Angstrom correlation has been used. The aforementioned cities have been so selected that each city is in each of the five topographical zones of the country. Then a comparison has been drawn with the measured values by Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE). The calculations have been simulated using MATLAB and validation is done between measured and calculated data using statistical error tests (MAD, BIAS, MSE, RMSE, and MAPE).