Release Notes

New features and improvements:

• The underlying solar resource and meteo database was updated. The updated database includes data from years 2019 and 2020. Read more for details.
• New functionality was added to recalculate data for an existing project when updated data are available in the Prospect application
  • User is informed when new or updated data are available on the server
  • User may choose to update the Project with new data or to keep historic data in the Project
  • Metadata section in project detail is now dynamically populated with actual project metadata

Bugfixes

• Search results are now again displayed on Prospect map
• Empty legend is not displaying for satellite and topographic maps

• The circumsolar contribution of radiation, which is the radiation that emanates from the region closely surrounding the solar disk, is now included in the beam component of the irradiance calculation, in angular correction of GTI, which is a part of the PVOUT calculation. Previously the circumsolar contribution was a part of the diffuse component angular correction. 
• The solar resource modelling of losses/gain has been upgraded. This is due to the horizon belt contribution to the diffuse component. The horizon belt is the ratio of the covered part of the horizon to sky part of horizon belt. The horizon belt is introduced into the Perez Model, which is a complex model that depends on some empirical coefficients of each component. You can read more about that here. 

Updates:

• Vietnamese language support
• Additional zoom level (zoom 12) in all Prospect maps

Bugfixing:

• Sorting of Projects without PV configuration by Installed capacity in compare section 

Updates:

• Added Backtracking as a configuration option of tracking PV systems
• Added decimal digits to some parameters (GHI, DNI, DIF, GTI, D2G)
• Improved GPS coordinate formatting (3 digits for longitude to clearly differentiate from latitude)
• Improved transferring projects

The processing of Solargis historical time series (TS) and long-term average (LTA) data were updated and related bugs have been fixed.

Key features:

• The monthly, yearly and LTA irradiation data were updated from daily average to sums
• We fixed the yearly PVOUT aggregation previously obtained from daily average, to yearly sums
• We fixed the UVA, UVA aggregation for monthly and yearly time period
• We increased the number of decimals in exports for the UVA and UVB as it was insufficient for the winter season
• We fixed the WOUT aggregation for monthly, yearly sums and LTA
• We fixed the monthly and yearly experimental uncertainty calculation and changed representation from daily average to sums as well

GOES-R satellite located at 75º West longitude (East location) covering mostly the West coast of continental US and Canada was updated in our historical time series for the period of May to December 2019.

Bug fixes:

Previously, time series data were incorrectly calculated for late afternoon hours for the 1st and last day of the month for the whole period of May to December 2019. It resulted in an underestimation of the cloud coverage for corresponding time series data.

This issue is now fixed in the updated version of our model v2.2.12. All data previously impacted for the west coast of continental US and Canada (approximately 0.5-1%) were correctly recalculated.

Solar radiation data for West Coast of USA and Canada, and Hawaii, for late afternoon hours on first and last day of each month in 2020 was incorrectly calculated, resulting in underestimation of cloud coverage. The issue was fixed and data for all affected days in 2020 was recalculated. Approximately 1% of all 2020 data in the west coast of continental US and Canada, and 2% of 2020 data for Hawaii was affected. Central and Eastern parts of Canada and US were not affected by this issue.

Key features:

• New dashboard with landing page
• Export of projects to a file
• GDPR compliant cookies banner that informs about the data which are being collected
• Improved unit settings of XLS reports. All units in XLS reports are now consistent with frontend an PDF reports
• Improved webpage responsivity, toolbars and other user interface improvements
• CAPTCHA for verification of new users

Bug fixes:

• Browser caching
• User creation fixed consistency
• Edit Company settings fixed
• Forgot password fixed
• PDF report layout
• Translation of unit settings
• Recent project list in new dashboard
• Fixed download of invoice, saving orders and order details
• Not possible to download in voice in SG Admin

Improved aggregation of 10 minute time series (native resolution) to 15 minute time step. Previously implemented aggregation resulted in 'steppy' profile during cloudless situations. A new aggregation method was introduced to avoid these features.

Improved merging of multiple data sources for a given parameter. As example, data merging methodology of historical and recent temperature data from 3 different sources, ERA5, CFSv2, and GFS, was updated. This update has been made to allow improved data handling that is required for advanced blending of multiple forecast models. The impact on historical data values will be negligible.