Release Notes

• The global numerical weather prediction system used (from ECMWF), IFS forecast model, has been upgraded to a global coverage with increased resolution from a partial regional coverage previously. More information can be found here. 
• Historical forecast is available with global coverage from 10/2021 and onwards, and is being continuously extended to previous years. 

One of the key benefits of the Solargis time series data is that the data have no gaps. Yet, there might be gaps in the archive of satellite images that are used as input in the Solargis model. For time stamps with missing satellite data, we apply intelligent statistical algorithms to deliver datasets without any gaps. The gap-filling of our accurate and validated time series historical irradiance data has been even further improved, leading to a minor change in values. 

Solargis offers TMY data which is information from a multi-year time series summarized into a Typical Meteorological Year (TMY), which reflects the most frequent weather conditions of a particular site, consisting of synthetic months. These synthetic months are updated and the generation of the TMY data is now further accelerated. 

Now our historical TMY and time series data can be accessed faster for North America, Europe, Africa, South Asia, Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of East Asia.

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

Solargis TMY data is constructed using multi-year time series (TS) by selecting the most representative months which are finally concatenated into one artificial and representative single year.

We introduced a new methodology for generation of different probability scenarios for TMY PXX (P99, P95, P90, P80, P75, P25, P20, P10, P5, P1) into the data delivery process.

The new methodology is based on increasing the number of months used to generate the TMY from TS. For example: if we have 27 years at the input, we create 729 synthesized candidates. This allows increasing the data points of constructing TMY in a simpler way but also increases the accuracy.

The calculation for the interannual variability of DNI for TMY Pxx (P90/95/99 - excluding P50) has been improved. The interannual variability affects the combined uncertainty, as such the expected DNI Pxx value is used for TMY generation. The combined uncertainty is now higher.