Performance of Solar Resource Monitoring Stations in Hot Climate Regions

This paper presents a study aimed at evaluating and comparing the performance of five selected solar resource monitoring stations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Also, present an overview of the current electricity demand since KSA's power sector relies heavily on liquid fuels. The data used in this study have been collected from the new solar atlas which was launched by KACARE for collecting the solar data along with other parameters through the installed stations across the country. The results showed the potential of solar irradiance during the year for different places which would contribute to the implementation of plans for renewable energy (RE) projects. The Selected City in the Northern region of KSA has the highest amount of solar irradiation with an approximate annual of 82450.5 Wh/m²/year, followed by the southern city with 73199.1 Wh/m²/year. Also, GBI and DNI data were compared to the earlier solar atlas data which was published by NREL in 2002 and they were in close agreement with less than 10% difference.