Solargis, a solar data and software service company, has launched a software platform designed specifically for visualization, quality management and analysis of solar data. Solargis Analyst, developed in-house by the Solargis data analysis team, empowers solar engineers and decision-makers to improve the efficiency of complex resource analysis, identify and fix errors in measurements, and improve their technical and financial decisions.
Solargis Analyst has been developed to work with solar measurements for over 1,000 sites worldwide. The early development process has been supported by the solar resource analysis team at pilot customer Iberdrola. Solargis Analyst provides a single user-friendly platform for effective management, visualization and analysis of solar resource and meteorological data – significantly reducing analysis time, simplifying complex data analysis procedures and facilitating teamwork.
In turn, the platform enables users to tackle all the most common quality management challenges, including unreliable, incomplete and inconsistently formatted data, while meeting demand from the industry for tools specifically based on solar physics and advanced data science.
In combination with the technical support and consultancy services already offered by Solargis, this ultimately enables solar PV stakeholders to increase confidence in financial transactions using validated data, and improve the accuracy and transparency of their performance assessments.
“As we aim to conduct best-practice solar measurement and data analysis campaigns for our growing global asset base, it’s imperative that we empower our solar resource analysis team, so that we can collectively have confidence in the quality of the data that underpins our strategic decision-making,” says Elena Rodríguez, a solar resource analyst at Iberdrola and a pilot user of Solargis Analyst. “Solargis has successfully delivered a software platform that helps us meet this objective and will no doubt contribute to improved data quality standards across the sector.”
As solar portfolios grow in size and complexity, so does the challenge of managing the consistency and quality of measured solar data streams during project development and operation. The scale of this challenge is significant, as most solar projects worldwide suffer in some way from unreliable solar resource data.
In particular, solar resource analysts face a constant struggle to reconcile ground-based measurements with satellite-model time series. Errors in solar measurements affect the accuracy of performance estimates, ultimately impacting financial returns. Furthermore, data quality issues also affect long-term operational decision-making, where inaccurate inputs hamper effective development and management of solar portfolios. Despite these concerns, it is estimated that 70% of solar resource analysts worldwide are still using spreadsheets or other non-specialist tools designed for other technologies to manage their solar data.
“Solargis Analyst is a tool that has been developed by solar resource specialists for solar analysts and decision makers,” adds Marcel Suri, CEO of Solargis. “Our team grapples daily with the challenges faced in reconciling inconsistent ground-based measurements with satellite time-series, and we have aimed to distil 20+ years of our experience in the field into software that will dramatically increase the efficiency of solar data visualization, analysis and quality management.”
