Products
menu item
Prospect
Quick estimate of PV site's solar potential
menu item
Evaluate
Time Series & TMY data for energy modelling
menu item
Monitor
Real-time PV output assessment
menu item
Forecast
Solar power output forecast for up to 14 days
menu item
Analyst
Simplified & unified solar data management
menu item
Integrations
Automate delivery of Solargis data
Use cases
menu item
Site selection
Find the right solar project location
menu item
Energy yield simulation
Analyze potential gains and risks
menu item
Optimizing power plant design
Find optimum power plant design
menu item
Real power plant performance
Discover the true output
menu item
Power output forecast
Predict solar project energy output
menu item
Ground data verification
Verify quality of solar & meteo measurements
Solar Resource & Meteo Assessment
Detailed solar resource validation and assessment
Site Adaptation of Solargis Models
Combining satellite data with on-site measurements
Quality Control of Solar & Meteo Measurements
Correction of errors in ground-measured data
Customized GIS Data
Customized Solargis GIS data for your applications
PV Energy Yield Assessment
Estimated energy uncertainties and related data inputs
PV Performance Assessment
Energy estimate for refinancing or asset acquisition
PV Variability & Storage Optimization Study
Understand output variability across wide geo regions
Regional Solar Energy Potential Study
Identification of locations for solar power plants
Our expertise
How our technology works
Methodology
How we transform science into technology
API & integration
How to integrate Solargis data via API
Product guides & documentation
Release notes
Success stories
Blog
Ebooks & Whitepapers
Webinars
Publications
Events
Free Maps & GIS Data
Solar performance maps
About Solargis
Partners
ISO Certification
Careers
“Solargis has the highest resolution satellite footprint available on the market, and, combined with our ground-monitoring stations, it offers the lowest GHI model uncertainty and interannual variability.”
George Szabo
Director of Solar Design, Apex Clean Energy

About Apex Clean Energy

Apex Clean Energy is a leading independent power producer in the U.S., with over 30GW in its diversified renewables portfolio.

Apex develops, constructs, operates, and owns utility-scale wind, solar, energy storage, and green fuels facilities across North America.

Apex conducts a robust project design and optimization phase to identify the optimal efficacy of solar technologies for inverters, racking, modules, and energy storage. This often leads to technologically complex projects which pair the best products available in line with constructability constraints and market opportunity.

Challenge: Integrating advanced solar technologies

New technologies such as bifacial and storage are becoming increasingly common in the U.S., offering a step change in operational efficiency through the sector. However, solar stakeholders are navigating fresh uncertainty around hardware tariffs and significant global supply chain volatility, driving asset owners to use these technologies effectively to add value to their portfolios.

According to the NREL, bifacial modules – which generate electricity on both sides of the panel – may already comprise up to 50% of installed U.S. capacity. There have been question marks around the industry’s capability to utilize innovative module designs fully.

Storage is another strong area of growth for the solar sector, holding the key to a wider roll out of photovoltaic technology. At present, there are still issues around managing charge and discharge cycles in a coordinated way with regard to the interconnection limits, market power prices, and grid congestion.

The effective integration of bifacial solar projects and solar plus storage has been hampered by a lack of high-quality albedo data – a measure of reflectance – and accurate sub-hourly time series data. This may lead to widespread underperformance, reducing investor confidence in the technologies.

Solution: Investing in albedo data and accurate, granular sub-hourly time series data

Apex Clean Energy has deployed high-resolution, granular resource and meteorological data from Solargis to optimize over 120 of its solar projects during design, development, and operations. Throughout these processes, Apex also utilized horizon data provided by Solargis Prospect software to track and map project locations.

To better integrate advanced technologies such as bifacial and storage, Apex Clean Energy has bolstered its bifacial projects with Solargis’ extensively validated albedo data, measuring surface reflectivity and ensuring optimal designs and efficient operations.

To optimize its storage assets, it has invested in one and five minute data provided by Solargis to support seamless battery operations and improved grid integration.

Outcome: Increased operational efficiency and asset value

Giridaran Srinivasan, Solargis’ CEO for the Americas, said: “Rising transparency around crucial project decisions means U.S. renewable investors are scrutinizing financial projections rigorously. We have been consistently impressed by Apex Clean Energy’s robust data use of high-quality data and commitment to accuracy over the two years we’ve worked together, and we look forward to supporting the wider U.S. solar sector as it takes a leap forward and adopts a best practice approach to solar resource data.”

Products used#

Reliable and bankable data
Sub-hourly data for technical design
Time Series & Typical Meteorological Year
Complete understanding of the site's conditions
Identifying weather variability & extremes
Reliable and accurate solar data
Fast sites comparison
Comprehensive environmental overview
Analytics and solar power calculator
Collaboration and multilingual support
Solargis provides data for Apex Clean Energy’s 10GW U.S. solar portfolio

Country

United States

 

Service

High resolution 1- and 5- minute data
Albedo data

 

Projects

10GW solar projects, some including storage

 

Outcomes

  • Improved operational efficiency for bifacial projects
  • More effective project design, including storage assets
  • Reduced resource risk
  • Seamless battery operations and improved grid integration