Analysis of solar radiation in Uganda :

Abstract

Solar energy is an alternative to fossil fuels for more sustainable and reliable energy options; with a huge potential to meet many times the present world energy demand. Readily available solar radiation data is a key to design and simulation of all solar energy applications. In this project, only sunshine hour data is considered which were obtained from the meteorological Department, Entebbe. The sunshine hour’s data got were measurements from 2007 to 2012, from three stations of Jinja, Soroti and Kasese. These stations are well spread throughout the country and hence the data gives a fair over view of the level of solar radiation in the country. It was observed that Soroti had high monthly averages compared to Jinja and Kasese with three minima occurring in April, July and November. This analysis revealed that more sunshine is received in the months of December to February and June to August in all the three stations. Low sunshine hours are encountered from November to December and lowest March to May. the distribution of mean sunshine interval from the three stations indicate that more sunshine occurred in Soroti with the average value of all the data recorded between 2007 and 2012 being 8.2 followed by Jinja with a value of 7.1 and finally Kasese with the lowest value of 6.1 hours. In general, a reduction in the percentage of the number of values in the lower interval range is observed across all the months implying that overcast days were either followed by a clear or partially clear days. Therefore Uganda encounters bright sunshine days most of the time in the year. Key words: Solar radiation, Shine hours, Mean sunshine interval, Uganda, Solar energy, Fossil fuels, Energy