Why the Site Diffuse Solar Radiation Rate per Area is smaller than the Surface Outside Face Incident Sky Diffuse Solar Radiation Rate per Area

asked 2023-09-18 22:05:57 -0600

939 ●6 ●10

updated 2023-09-21 22:23:10 -0600

I was modeling a shoebox office with two windows facing the south using EnergyPlus, the windows are two vertical plane. However, when I extract the hourly report, I found the Site Diffuse Solar Radiation Rate per Area is smaller than the Surface Outside Face Incident Sky Diffuse Solar Radiation Rate per Area at some hours. I didn't understand why this happened really.

Below is the picture of the model: image description

Below is the results: image description

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The title and description state "Site Direct Solar Radiation Rate per Area", yet the graph suggests "Site Diffuse Solar Radiation Rate per Area". Could you clarify, re-edit your post?

Denis Bourgeois ( 2023-09-19 05:51:23 -0600 )edit

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answered 2023-09-21 06:11:58 -0600

Denis Bourgeois
2981 ●111 ●8 http://www.rd2.ca

updated 2023-09-22 04:46:36 -0600

NOT a definitive answer - suggestions if you wanted to take a deeper dive.

Assuming the model is in the Northern Hemisphere, a south-facing surface will see the sun rise on its left (~SE) and set on its right (~SW) in early January. Depending on the Perez Sky Model calculations, a south-facing vertical surface may receive more diffuse irradiance than a horizontal surface ("Site Diffuse Solar Radiation Rate"), when the sun is fairly low (morning & afternoon), mainly due to circumsolar and horizon brightening. The south-facing surface would also receive diffuse radiation reflected off the ground (more so when the sun is low). Your results seems to reflect that.

A deeper dive would involve reproducing the calculations in the link above, e.g. isolate the contributions from sky dome vs horizon vs circumsolar. In the meantime, here a few simple tests (may help):

rotate the model 90° so the subsurface is east-facing: same phenomenon only in the morning?
rotate the model 90° so the subsurface is west-facing: same phenomenon only in the afternoon?
adjust ground reflectance (to isolate its contribution)