Comparison of evaporation models for free water basins surfaces

The assessment of the water evaporation rate (E) is worth of interest in a wide range of frameworks, such as: hydrology, agronomy, forestry, land resources planning and, energy. In recent time, there is a growing interest in evaluating the interaction of floating photovoltaic systems with water basins. This study presents four novel numerical models, which allow calculating the E starting from environmental variables (e.g. global irradiance, ambient temperature, wind speed, relative humidity). The proposed numerical models have been obtained through the use of both the Design of Experiments (DoE) methodology and linear regression method. Such models have been evaluated by comparing their results with that ones obtained by reference models, as well as with experimental data. The statistical indices highlight that the prediction of the proposed models have a better accuracy than many reference models. In the light of the obtained results, the proposed models could represent useful tools that require a simple implementation to quantify rather quickly the evaporation rate of a basin in which PV floating systems are installed.