A Survey of Solar Irradiance Measurement Techniques

Marine fishermen need weather updates in realtime. Currently, there is no affordable communication mechanism for them from the sea. OceanNet is a solution developed by our research center to serve this purpose. It is proposed to monitor oceanic microclimate using OceanNet by installing weather stations and sensors on boats and to issue realtime weather alerts to fishermen. A low-cost solar irradiance sensor is one of the sensors to be built in-house to monitor the weather changes. Accurate measurement of solar irradiance will aid research in the area of climate change adaptation. This paper describes the survey of solar irradiance sensors and measurement techniques conducted for this purpose. The review covers three types of commercial instruments and five different research prototypes for solar irradiance measurement. A suitable technique is formulated for our prototype based on this survey.