Release Notes

We extended the nowcast availability provided in Solargis. The nowcasting is accessible in the timeframe of up to 6 hours ahead thanks to the Solargis Cloud Motion Vector (CMV) model.

We have extended the nowcast in MSG/MFG PRIME (Europe and Africa) region to Azores, Egypt and Zambia.

Solargis' metadata was updated in all CSV file header of products. The updates include information on whether horizon shading is applied for GHI, DNI, DIF and GTI data, e.g. #GHI - Global horizontal irradiation [Wh/m2], no data value -9, with terrain shading.

Key features:

• All charts are now exportable and with more additional info added to exported images.
• Recent projects on Dashboard and Prospect application now show the same projects.
• Unused language selector was removed from Data exports screen.
• Improved Compare links - Projects in Compare stay selected after the page reload.
• Default time format for new users based on their local settings.
• UI improvements

Bug fixes:

• Fixed issues with user registration and trial requests.
• Fixed issues in company invitation workflow.
• Deleted users no longer block subscription slots.
• SNOWD parameter is now visible in Compare.
• Displaying charts in Compare tool.
• Corrected texts in CSV exports.

We have extended the nowcast data access to New Caledonia. The nowcasting model, based on the calculation of cloud motion vectors from satellite data, provides forecasts within the next 6 hours timeframe. 

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

Wind power (WOUT) has been developed and integrated into the standard delivery method of Solargis' forecasts.

This is a preliminary version and we are currently working to release a more developed one.

Key features:

• Push API enablement for FTP delivery type
• Access to a global coverage

Forecast services are now providing predictions up to 15 days ahead. This is related to the recent integration of input parameters from the GFS model, which have been extended to day +15.

Within the release of this new version, improvement on data post-processing methods affecting forecasting of atmospheric pressure (AP) has been implemented too.

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.

For Europe, forecasts for lead time from 2 hours up to 120 hours is now based on blending of forecasts from 2 NWP models - IFS (ECMWF) and ICON-EU (DWD). In general, IFS is considered as the best performing global NWP model. Yet, we've seen many instances when the IFS forecasts error was quite high. To limit the occurrence of large forecast errors, henceforth a blended forecasts of IFS and ICON-EU models will be used. 

Overall, the new approach is expected to improve accuracy of both intra-day and day-ahead solar power forecasts.

Currently, forecasts from the ICON-EU model is being used only for Europe. We are working on implementation of forecasts of ICON model also for other regions.

For a more detailed explanation see this update on our Productboard.

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.