Global solar portfolios are increasingly producing fragmented and incomplete data, which can impact project performance and financial returns.
Research from Sandia National Laboratories – one of the US Department of Energy’s network of research labs – shows a broad range of inconsistencies and a lack of standardised processes across data collection and sharing in solar PV portfolios. The laboratory said that the PV industry “lacks clear and consistent understanding of PV operations software” and their impact on performance and monitoring.
The study assessed 24 software providers with 1.1TW of installed utility-scale and corporate & industrial (C&I) solar capacity across 115,000 sites. It identified a series of key takeaways, including some related to publicly available, shareable plant performance data.
58.3% of the sites in the assessment were in North America, with 25% in Europe and the rest in Asia and Africa.
The research found that while 70% of platforms offer public APIs (programmes that allow data to be shared between two applications or sites), 30% still place restrictions and costs on data export, demonstrating that interoperability and data accessibility challenges still persist across the industry.
Sandia National Laboratories said the findings follow the “rapid” expansion of the solar operations software market and global solar PV deployments themselves.
These operations platforms are managing ever larger and more diverse portfolios of solar assets, with bigger pools of data across different countries. There is also a diversification of suppliers and manufacturers with different product specifications and performance criteria.
“The solar industry has scaled at an unprecedented rate, leading to operators managing more assets, systems and data than ever before,” said Alon Mashkovich, CEO & co-founder of enSights, one of the energy monitoring companies involved in Sandia Labs’ research.
“All of this has led to a fragmented data landscape that makes it increasingly difficult for operators to gain a clear understanding of portfolio performance, ultimately limiting their ability to maximise returns and realise the full value of their assets.”
He continued: “The data accessibility issue and array of different performance KPI definitions are only compounding the data fragmentation challenge, at a time when operators are under increasing pressure to optimise portfolio performance and returns.
“By removing these barriers, we will be able to enable operators to obtain a clear, transparent view of their portfolios that will enable better decisions, stronger performance and greater confidence in the data that drives them.”
