A Study on the Different Components of Solar Radiation in Order to Calculate the Optimum Solar Angles and the Gain of Solar Energy Using Genetic Algorithm

In this paper, the genetic algorithm is applied to calculate the optimum slope and surface azimuth angles for receiving maximum solar radiation in an area of Iran. Different components of solar radiation are employed in order to calculate the solar optimum angles. At first, the optimum angels are calculated in different days, months, seasons and the whole year and the energy gain is calculated. Then, this process is redone with considering different component of solar radiation. These conditions are direct, direct and ground reflect, direct and diffuse, and all together. The results showed that maximum solar energy in different days of a year is received at different slope angels; however, the optimum azimuth angle is zero for receiving maximum solar energy. In addition, adjusting the collector at the daily optimum slope angle can only save energy very little compared with the case at the monthly optimum slope angle. Furthermore, the results of analyzing different components of solar radiation show that the optimum slope angles are mostly related to the direct radiation, however, the gain of energy is considerably different. It is worth mentioning that genetic algorithm is more effective when the independent parameters are numerous and in this case, the optimum angles are easily determined, however, the computation time is reduced.