Prospect
Quick estimate of PV site's solar potential
Juraj Beták
Jun 20, 2024
The solar energy industry is evolving rapidly, placing increasing importance on efficiency and precise performance evaluation. Within this dynamic environment, Solargis has launched Solargis Monthly Reports, a reliable mechanism to attribute production changes to solar irradiation and weather events, increasing accountability and transparency in asset management.
This innovative report provides comprehensive insights into solar and meteorological factors impacting PV performance. It enables portfolio managers and PV site operators to optimize operations and deliver clear insights to board members, senior management teams and C-suite decision makers about the performance of their PV projects.
One of the main challenges facing the solar energy sector is the unpredictable variability of solar irradiance and weather conditions. These factors can cause significant fluctuations in energy output, impacting solar energy production levels.
When energy production unexpectedly changes, it can trigger concerns about possible technical failures. This prompts portfolio managers and operators to conduct thorough and costly investigations. These efforts, however, may reveal that the fluctuations were actually caused by natural weather variations rather than equipment malfunctions.
Furthermore, presenting clear and actionable insights to investors and upper management, including board members, senior management teams and C-suite decision makers, from these investigations requires considerable time and effort.
Solargis' Monthly Reports offer a solution to this challenge by providing a detailed monthly summary of key parameters such as Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI), Global Tilted Irradiance (GTI), temperature, and precipitation.
These reports are not merely raw data dumps; they are enriched with contextual information, comparing current data against long-term averages, overlayed with geographical information about a customers’ specific projects. The reporting information allows portfolio managers and operators to quickly discern whether deviations in energy production are due to weather anomalies or other factors.
The reports save portfolio managers and operators time and resources by providing a ready-to-use, comprehensive overview of their PV systems' performance, eliminating the need for them to manually compile and analyze data for reporting.
1. First-level diagnostics to save time and money
These reports help identify whether underperformance is due to weather conditions, acting as an initial diagnostic tool. By pinpointing weather-related causes of production fluctuations, portfolio managers and operators can avoid unnecessary field investigations, saving both time and money.
The solar data in the reports are re-analyzed and harmonized monthly to sustain accuracy. This process involves recalculating data to account for factors like aerosols, which enhances confidence in the reported figures.
2. Comprehensive data overview of the month for timely and accurate insights
The Monthly Reports compile data from all a customers’ chosen monitored sites, providing a summary of each month rather than the granular hourly or 15-minute data offered by Solargis Monitor. This summary includes both the current month's values and long-term averages, giving a clear picture of weather-related variations.
The reports empower PV power plant portfolio managers and operators with timely and accurate insights into weather conditions and solar resource availability, which are crucial factors influencing PV performance.
3. Geographical context with maps to understand broader variational trends
The inclusion of maps in the reports provides a visual representation of the data. Users can see how weather variations affect different regions and assess whether a decrease in solar irradiance is a localized issue or part of a broader, countrywide or global trend or anomaly.
The reports also include the geographic distribution of a specific customers’ PV sites and how they are affected by solar irradiation, temperature, and precipitation variations. This visual context helps users quickly understand regional impacts on their portfolios, while ensuring that the reports are highly relevant to users' operational contexts.
4. Enhanced reporting to investor and upper management stakeholders:
Our Monthly Reports are designed for straightforward presentation to investors and upper management stakeholders, such as board members, senior management teams and C-suite decision makers. They include detailed data and clear visualizations, making them perfect for presentations and other investor-related reporting needs.
Essentially, these reports offer a dependable method to link production changes to solar irradiation and weather events, thereby improving accountability and transparency in asset management.
5. Annual summary for long-term planning:
As part of the product, at the end of each year we compile an annual summary that consolidates monthly data, providing a comprehensive overview of our performance throughout the year. This summary is invaluable for long-term planning and assessment.
By comparing monthly and annual summaries with long-term averages, portfolio managers and operators can readily discern recent trends. Visual aids such as monthly and annual difference maps help us visualize the impact across your entire portfolio and strengthen your arguments when evaluating financial outcomes.
Solargis can also create the annual report based on the fiscal year, ensuring alignment with your company's reporting timeline. This flexibility allows the service to match our customers reporting needs effectively.
Azure Power
Several companies have already benefited from Solargis' Monthly Reports. Azure Power, a solar energy company in India, has used these reports to identify long-term trends in solar irradiance, which has been crucial for their financial planning and project viability assessments. By understanding these trends, the company has been able to make more informed decisions about future investments and operations.
Satnam Mahley, AVP Design & Engineering, Azure Power, said:
"Solargis' Monthly Reports have changed our approach to PV performance assessment. With precise, context-rich data, we’ve been able to swiftly identify if variations in energy output are due to natural weather changes or other factors, and easily and quickly report the answers up the chain of command, saving us significant time and resources.”
“The new reports have empowered us to make better decisions, optimize our operations, and, most importantly, present clear, actionable insights to our stakeholders and upper management teams. Solargis’ Monthly Reports essentially transform data into a strategic and useful asset for our projects."
Solargis' new Monthly Reports product assists portfolio managers and operators in assessing and reporting their energy yield and PV project performance. It provides detailed, accurate, and context-rich data, helping them navigate the complexities of solar energy production. This enables optimization of operations and better-informed decision-making, which are crucial for sustainable and efficient energy production.
Contact us today to learn more about how Solargis' Monthly Reports can transform your approach to PV performance assessment and reporting.
