Six global solar irradiation models were tested against data measured at three stations from Romania in the year 2000. One of the tested models, called EIM, is an empirical global solar irradiation model fitted by us, which requires as input a single meteorological parameter associated with the mean daily cloud amount. The accuracy of the EIM is acceptable and comparable to that of parametric models, which need more than one meteorological datum as input. The main conclusion is that such simple empirical "local-models" are a useful alternative for the more complicated one. In addition, the details of obtaining EIM are presented as a driven-tool, which may serve as a guide to elaborate similar simple solar irradiation models in any other location as well. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.