The Full Picture

“In developing countries all over the world we have removed some

of the uncertainty about the size and intensity of the solar and wind

resource,” says Klaus Toepfer, former executive director for Solar and

Wind Energy Resource Assessment (SWERA)

at the United Nations

Environment Programme (UNEP). “These countries need greatly

expanded energy services to help in the fight against poverty and to

power sustainable development. SWERA offers them the technical

and policy assistance to capture the potential that renewable energy

can offer,” he says. “As energy planners seek cleaner energy solu-

tions using renewable energy technologies, the availability of reliable,

accurate and accessible solar and wind energy information is criti-

cal and can significantly accelerate the deployment of these

technologies. In the case of renewable energy, knowledge is literally

power”.

Peter Toggweiler of Enecolo AG tells of its problems with plant

monitoring: “As an engineering consultant, Enecolo AG is mandated

to monitor more than 30 PV plants with a total installed power of

about 2.5 MW. The PV plants are distributed all over Switzerland

and the southern part of Germany, and differ widely in installed

power, module types, inverters and monitoring procedure. Most PV

systems are provided with a device that allows connection to the

inverter. But for each type of inverter, another software and data

logger is needed and a different type of data is provided.

“For most PV systems we receive the monthly energy yield via fax

or e-mail. All these data are then manually collected and analysed.

This procedure is very time consuming and ineffective. As we only

receive monthly data, it can be 31 days before we recognize a

malfunction. Failures that don’t lead to a complete outage but only

to a minor reduction of the energy yield are often not detected at all,

or only after several months. With a satellite-based service, plant

monitoring will be facilitated and more efficient: hourly data of the

energy yield of the PV plant is automatically collected on the server

and delivered to the operators of the PV system through

the Internet. Thus, no time-intensive manual collection

of the data is necessary. The data is updated every day,

so it is possible to detect malfunctions within one day

instead of within one month”.

Dr Henner Gladen of Solar Millennium AG, a German,

global-oriented technology and service company, says:

“Solar radiation time series delivered by DLR were used

in the planning of eight projects, with a total peak power

of 360 MW. This corresponds to an estimated invest-

ment of about EUR1,400 million. Solar Millennium AG

is planning further large solar thermal power plants

worldwide. The field of large solar thermal power plants

is an evolving market with projected worldwide invest-

ment to the order of some EUR10 billion over the next

ten years. To improve economical analysis we want to

make further use of satellite based solar irradiance data.

It allows us to receive reliable maps showing the distri-

bution of solar energy in regions of interest, for use in

further projects.”

Mathieu Sarran from German company Lahmeyer

International, which provides technologies for energy

infrastructure development, says: “Our consulting activ-

ities on rural electricity provision by means of solar

energy require accurate data on solar radiation. In Africa,

such data are inexistent in under-developed regions.

Accordingly, Lahmeyer International installs its own

measuring stations. The availability of radiation data

that can be accessed through the SoDa service is a real

advantage for our company.

“The first benefit is that they are available at any site:

there are more data than we can install stations. The

second benefit is that archives are available instanta-

neously while our measuring stations need to work two

full years before delivering a consistent and reliable time

series. Advantages include fast access to information,

reliability of information, large geographical coverage

and the dramatic decrease of costs for study and plan-

ning. By exploiting these data, projects can be realized

more quickly, more reliably, more completely and more

competitively.”

The future of solar energy resources

Earth observation satellites have proven to be a valuable

tool for the optimum use of solar energy resources.

Satellites and ground measurements are excellent part-

ners for providing dedicated services, with satellites

allowing services on a large regional scale. Both indus-

trialized and developing countries are covered by the

same satellite technology and can profit from each other.

Various user statements both from the industrial and

public sectors show the benefits of solar energy resources

already exist. Nevertheless, realizing the full potential

of the GEOSS system requires further collaboration

between users and information providers to enable

global data access and improved data accuracy. In partic-

ular, new approaches in data policy and long-term

maintenance of databases, archives and access infra-

structure are needed in the GEOSS framework.

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SoDa interface

The SoDa web interface enables automatic access to both the Ecole des

Mines des Paris Helioclim database and the Surface Meteorology and Solar

Energy NASA data set

Source:

www.soda-is.com

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