PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF GROUND-BASED MEASURED SOLAR DATA FROM SAURAN STA STATION AT UMLAZI, SOUTH AFRICA

The growing worldwide demand of electricity and the consequences related to the use of fossil fuel to generate electricity have boosted research in renewable and sustainable energies to overcome those challenges. From diverse sources of renewable energies (RE), solar and wind are wildly distributed and have reached the maturity stage. South Africa (SA) as one of growing economy is in need of more electricity to sustain its domestic need of electricity and its economy, RE is an option. With its potential in solar energy (SE), the need of accurate information on site to build solar power plans are of vital importance for designers and decision's makers. This paper presents the preliminary analysis of ground-based measurements solar data in Umlazi, South Africa. From this analysis, data statistics and statistic models for the global horizontal irradiance (GHI), the direct horizontal irradiance (DHI) and the ultraviolet radiations (UVR) are obtained for Durban and surrounding areas. Those results can be used in the design and analysis of solar systems and can also be used as referential parameters for further assessment of solar energy potentials for those areas