An Assessment of Solar Radiation Patterns for Sustainable Implementation of Solar Home Systems in Nigeria

The need for new energy infrastructure in Nigeria has long been established due to poor and unstable power supply, resulting in decrease of energy consumed when compared with African and World average. Solar Home System (SHS) is one of the sustainable renewable energy sources adequate for domestic power supply. Perhaps, it is among the best options for Nigeria especially being in the tropics where there is so much sunshine to convert to energy. This study focused on assessing the availability (measure of readiness) of the source through field survey and experiments. In this work, historical trends of solar radiation pattern of some locations were collected, studied and analysed. The annual mean of monthly global solar radiation is 22.88MJ/m2/day, 18.29MJ/m2/day and 17.08MJ/m2/day for high, medium and low zones respectively. While 12.06 Hrs/day, 12.04 Hrs/day and 12.03 Hrs/day were found to be the solar sunshine duration for high, medium and low zones respectively. It also shows that, by tracking the length of the sunny period for a day is about 13 hour, about 1½ hour longer when no tracking is used. This would provide potentials and valuable aid for sustainable development in design and installation of photovoltaic systems in Nigeria