The Effect of Tilt and Azimuth Angle Variations on Monthly and Annual Incident Solar Radiations for Locations in Brazil

This paper analyzes the effect of the surface's azimuth and tilt angle changes on the incident solar irradiation for every location in Brazil. The monthly and annual incident solar radiations on tilted surfaces under different azimuth and inclination angles are estimated to generate graphs as color contour maps, which show the fraction (%) of the maximum irradiation availability at each location. A simulation tool is developed in Python to generate the graphs by computing the incident solar radiations on inclined surfaces based on the Brazilian global horizontal solar irradiation data and the locations' geographic coordinates. Simulation results show that the changes in azimuth angle did not generally result in significant incident solar radiation losses for the slope angle of up to around 20 degrees. Hence, mounting the PV modules under this tilt angle limitation and any azimuth angle results in maintaining a high level of annual incident radiation. This simulation tool can be used by designers to quickly evaluate the effect of specific tilt and azimuth angles on the monthly and yearly incident solar irradiation for a particular location.