Description Realistic, high resolution solar radiation data is an important requirement for the accurate design and assessment of photovoltaic and solar thermal energy systems. However, solar radiation data at time resolutions of less than an hour is rarely available and unfortunately hourly data can provide a misleading picture as to how a solar energy system could perform. The aim of this project is to develop a computer tool to generate high resolution (<10minute) synthetic solar data, based on commonly-available hourly data  and to test the validity of the synthetic data against real solar data. The project will mainly involve modelling work but could also incorporate some data collection.    Key Objectives

• review literature on stochastic generation of solar radiation data  - acquire suitable high resolution real solar data sets - develop a tool to generate high resolution data  - develop performance assessment metrics for synthetic solar data  - comparison of synthetic solar data to real data and assessment of validity Good mathematical skills and programming skills in C, C++, Matlab, VBA or Python is ESSENTIAL.