Solar radiation climate in Africa

This work is a first attempt to propose a map of the solar radiation climate in Africa. Such a map is very useful for preliminary assessment and modeling of solar energy systems. Following the approach adopted for Europe, a data set of monthly means of the daily clearness index has been assembled for 62 sites. A cluster analysis was applied to create 20 classes that were reported on a map of Africa. These classes were geographically extended, thus creating a solar radiation climate map, comprising 20 climates. Known features and other atlases, global or local, were used in this mapping. This map and its companion tables permit to perform elementary energy calculations. Further improvements are discussed. Keywords: Clearness index; Atmosphere optics; Clustering; Interpolation; Map; Solar energy systems