Best practices

Branislav Schnierer, PV Modeling Expert at Solargis, discusses the most common problems and best practices for taking and quality-controlling ground measurements. Webinar was recorded for PVPMC 2020 event in China. Read article

Satellite maps are a basic tool for decision makers, planners and developers of photovoltaic (PV) power plants. They are essential for site-selection, land evaluation and understanding the local topography. They play an indispensable role, especially for the evaluation of sites in unknown territories and in peculiar climate zones. Read article

Global Photovoltaic Power Potential by Country is an innovative new study developed by Solargis for the World Bank. The study aims to assess the potential for solar PV in every country, capitalising on several new, market-first, metrics and techniques. Read article

Watch the PVPMC webinar organized by Sandia where Branislav Schnierer, PV Modeling Specialist from Solargis talked about the technical aspects of self-shading analysis. Read article

Solargis’ Technical Director, Tomas Cebecauer, and Managing Director, Marcel Suri speak about the core ingredients for a reliable database, Solargis’ ongoing efforts to enhance and validate its data services, and how users of Solargis’ data can most effectively undertake their own validation using on-site measurements. Read article

Bad data in equals bad data out. This well-known phrase is very relevant in a context of technical design and energy simulation of photovoltaic (PV) power plants. Most solar companies understand this and are carefully evaluating uncertainty of solar resource data used for feasibility purposes ... Read article

To assess the solar resource or energy yield potential of a site, we model the solar resource/energy yield using best available information and methods. The resulting estimate is the P50 estimate, or in other words, the “best estimate”. P50 is essentially a statistical level of confidence suggesting that we expect to exceed the predicted solar resource/energy yield 50% of the time. However, ... Read article

The process of estimating solar radiation data uncertainty can be sometimes unclear. We've tried to summarise in 4 simple steps how model validation statistics can be used for determining uncertainty of model estimates for P75, P90, and other Pxx estimates. Read article

Just as there are horses for courses, different forecasting techniques are more suitable depending on the intended forecast lead time. Ground-based and satellite-based methods offer best forecast skill for forecast lead time of few hours ahead. Beyond that NWP models offer best forecast skill. A combination of models provides better forecast than any individual forecast model. Read article

Accurate solar resource data is needed for planning, engineering and financing of a solar energy project. Read article