Solar Energy : in Bangladesh

Solar radiation data are essential to the works of energy planners, engineers, environmental and agricultural scientists. But the measured radiation data for a long period are not available all over Bangladesh. However, Bangladesh Meteorological Department has been recording different climatological parameters for years together throughout the country. Computation of solar radiation may be done using these meteorological parameters. For this purpose, we used theoretical formula proposed by different authors in literature. Monthly average data on sunshine duration (n), day length (N), relative humidity (R), temperature (T) etc. for a period of 28 years between 1980 and 2007 are used. So, this study is carried out to determine empirically global, diffuse and direct solar radiation on a horizontal surface for ten districts uniformly distributed all over Bangladesh (latitude 20o34N - 26o34N and longitude 88o01E - 92o41E) as well as to predict correlations for them.