Sampling Solar Irradiance with Copula

Solar radiation data at the place of interest is not available all the time mainly due to the cost of measuring instruments. In these cases, it is possible to get reasonable accurate estimation using the different models such as copula method. This paper presents a model ultimately provides a framework for generating simulated solar irradiation data using a copula with beta distributions. Based on normalized global irradiance and normalized beam irradiance, a model is developed to create synthetic solar irradiation data for use in solar energy systems and planning. The model is applied to the city of Philadelphia using hourly measurements of solar irradiation from 2003–2012 using the Solar Anywhere website. The results are compared with the real data and it is shown that the copula approach performs good.