The Full Picture

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tional plants as well as from different renewable sources, such as

solar PV plants, and deliver it to the final users.

GEOSS near-term success project on solar energy data for

developing countries

Using the SoDa service

as a foundation, NASA and the Ecole des

Mines de Paris have collaborated in an effort to provide solar energy

data for developing countries. Two databases, the Ecole des Mines des

Paris Helioclim database and the Surface Meteorology and Solar

Energy (SSE) NASA data set were combined. The SoDa web interface

enables automatic access to both data sets, selecting the database

with the best temporal and spatial resolution for a certain location.

Daily values of a site’s irradiance for a multi-annual time series

length can be retrieved via a web service. This project is a success-

ful example of how European and US-based databases can be merged

and made available to the global community. This activity is already

a part of the NASA Energy Management Applied Science programme,

and will be a part of the planned Global Monitoring for Environment

and Security (GMES) solar energy radiation core service.

Benefit of earth observation for solar energy users

During the Environmental Information for Solar Energy Industries

(ENVISOLAR)

project (part of the European Space Agency’s Earth

Observation Market Development programme), users sought to raise

awareness on GEOSS capabilities. The user group included institu-

tional investors, engineering companies active as project developers,

assurances, banks and professional operators of solar power plants,

private investors, utilities, and load management software operators.

SAG Solarstrom AG builds and operates different sized PV instal-

lations and provides full financial investments to its customers.

Benedikt Ortmann, chief financial officer, says: “Looking

at our huge investment, we have to be sure that we mini-

mize the risk. Constant solar radiation is the basis for

that.” SAG Solarstrom’s Uwe Ilgeman states that he

cannot set satellite-derived data aside when building and

operating systems. “Especially with regard to future

markets like Spain, we need solid information for invest-

ment decisions,” he says. “The resolution of

ground-based data is too coarse – for example in Spain

there are only 30 sites available at the moment. Here,

satellite-derived data could help a lot.”

Contracting company Edisun Power AG, the largest

contractor of PV plants in Switzerland, orders site eval-

uations based on earth observation data. Site evaluations

for PV systems are of high importance for the investor,

as location is one of the most important factors in deter-

mining the profit or loss of a PV plant. Before

satellite-based irradiance values were available, reliable

yield estimations for many regions remained wishful

thinking. Edisun Power AG director Robert Kröni

confirms: “Comparison with existing PV installations,

the best source for site evaluation, is only available for

regions where the contractor already has a sufficient

number of PV installations. When a new market opens

this source is not available, as PV operators do not

usually publish their production values. We are now

expanding into countries like Germany, Italy and Spain

where we have no operation experience. To assure the

flow back of investment we must be sure that we build

the PV systems at locations with enough solar radiation”.

Photovoltaic system Jasminweg in Zürich. The Jasminweg photovoltaic system is operated by Edisun Power AG

using plant monitoring services based on satellite information

Photo: Enecolo AG

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