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Vehicle occupants, unlike building occupants, are exposed to continuously varying, non-uniform solar heat load. Automotive manufacturers use photovoltaic cells based solar sensor to measure intensity and direction of the direct-beam solar radiation. Use of the time of the day and the position - latitude and longitude - of a vehicle is also common to calculate direction of the direct-beam solar radiation. Two angles - azimuth and elevation - are used to completely define the direction of solar radiation with respect to the vehicle coordinate system. Although the use of solar sensor is common in today’s vehicles, the solar heat load on the occupants, because of their exposure to the direct-beam solar radiation remains the area of in-car subjective evaluation and tuning. Since the solar rays travel in parallel paths, application of the ray tracing method to determine solar insolation of the vehicle occupants is possible.

The human thermal comfort, which has been a subject of extensive research, is a principal objective of the automotive climate control system. Applying the results of research studies to the practical problems require quantitative information of the thermal environment in the passenger compartment of a vehicle. The exposure to solar radiation is known to alter the thermal environment in the passenger compartment. A photovoltaic-cell based sensor is commonly used in the automotive climate control system to measure the solar radiation exposure of the passenger compartment of a vehicle. The erroneous information from a sensor however can cause thermal discomfort to the occupants. The erroneous measurement can be due to physical or environmental parameters. Shading of a solar sensor due to the opaque vehicle body elements is one such environmental parameter that is known to give incorrect measurement.

A human thermal comfort, which has been a subject of extensive research, is a principal objective of the climate control systems. Applying the results of research studies to practical problems requires quantitative information of the thermal environment parameters, such as the solar radiation. A photovoltaic-cell based sensor is commonly used in the automotive climate control systems for the measurement of solar radiation information. The erroneous information from the sensors can cause thermal discomfort. The erroneous measurement from sensors can be due to physical or environmental parameters. Shading of a solar sensor due to opaque vehicle body elements is one such environmental parameter that is known to give incorrect measurement. Analytical method that uses fundamental geometric principles is proposed to determine whether sensor is shaded, for a known location of the sun and for a given geometry of the vehicle passenger compartment.