Objective
ENVISOLAR aims at the
increased
use of satellite based solar radiation information for solar energy
industries.
A more detailed description of ENVISOLAR objectives can be found in a paper prepared
for the
workshop
"Solar Resource from the Local Level to Global Scale in Support of the
Resource Management of Renewable Electricity Generation"
held at the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), Ispra,
Italy on 6-7 December 2004.
Motivation
The solar market has a
volume
of about 600 million EURO/year in Germany and about 100 million
EURO/year
in the rest of the EU. Expected market volumes in 2010 are 1100 million
EURO and 2500 million EURO, respectively. That means the solar energy
sector
is turning from an idealistically driven to a financially driven
market.
Therefore, investment assurance is necessary. Services which can
provide
the required support are needed in two phases:
- Investment decisions
- Plant management
Another emerging market that
promises
good benefits is forecasting the electricity load and production for
electric
utilities. Scheduling of large power plants needs a precise knowledge
of
the load. Besides temperature, irradiance is the major environmental
influence
on the electricity demand. Because of liberalised markets and higher
penetration
a professional load forecast is necessary to achieve good prices in
energy
spot markets.
Basic information for the
energy market
segments outlined above is solar radiation. In detail global, diffuse
and
direct irradiance are needed.
The following services providing
solar radiation
information will be improved through the ENVISOLAR project:
Services for Investment
Decision
- Site analysis and
optimisation
which allows
finding the best site for a planned power plant.
- “Premium” site audit: This
will give investors
a good basis for their investment decision. Premium site audits are
done
mainly for large solar plants.
- Web service based yield
estimation: A cost
effective way to estimate the expected yield for smaller plants.
Service examples are available in
the
following fact sheets:
Background:
To optimise the financial yield,
site
assessment is necessary for the investor. This is provided by GIS
(Geographical
Information System) based services. These services also supply
information
about distances to feed-in points, irradiance, and so on. By such means
it is possible to find the optimal location for solar power plants.
With
increasing plant size and therefore higher investments, the investors
need
better site optimisation.
On the other hand the financing
of solar
power plants is based largely on loans. Therefore financial institutes
and insurers expect precise audits before they give their
approval
for a loan to an investor. For large plants at least two site audits
are
required: One or two have to be provided by the investor and one is
ordered
by the bank itself to confirm the basic figures for the investment
decision.
Also for the market of small
solar energy
systems an estimation of the expected yield is required by the private
investor to minimise the risk of loosing money and to compare the
offers
of different suppliers. As he does not pay for this service at this
stage
of the selling process, the yield estimation has to be very cost
effective.
Also the number of offers is high and therefore access to this kind of
yield estimation has to be easy and fast.
Services for Plant
Management
- Fault detection: Advanced
fault detection
and performance control allow reliable alarms and assure the validity
of
the investment.
- Performance check for
smaller
plants allows
to give first estimates of performance and failures
Service examples are available in
the
following fact sheets (pdf format):
Background:
To assure good benefit from the
installed
solar energy systems, plant monitoring must be realised for every
plant.
To meet the different demands, the scale of service is different.
Smaller
solar energy systems need low cost monitoring ("performance check"),
large
solar energy systems need detailed monitoring with automatic fault
detection
routines. Both services aim at a reduction of down time and fast
(“automated”)
detection of faults.
Services for Utilities
- Solar energy forecasting
for
electric utilities
Service examples are available in
the
following fact sheet:
Background:
Currently, load forecasting
becomes an
increasingly important issue for electric utilities. More sophisticated
methodologies, which take into account several meteorological
quantities
including solar irradiance, are introduced. This has to guarantee that
at any time utilities provide exactly the power that is needed by their
customers, otherwise major grid failures as recently experienced in the
USA may result. With a higher penetration of the grid by renewable
energies
also the production becomes strongly weather dependent. Today wind
power
prediction is already an urgently needed service in some ESA countries.
In the near future also a precise prediction of solar electricity
production
will become necessary.
Time-Series Services for Science
and Consulting
- Time series, maps and
statistics of irradiance,
direct and diffuse components and spectral components such as
illumination
will be provided to the user.
Service examples are available in
the
following fact sheet:
Background:
Time series are used to calculate
the
yield of solar thermal and photovoltaic power plants. Furthermore they
can be used to estimate light and heat demand within buildings for
architectural
purposes. Time series are a semi-finished product on which all other
products
are built but there is also a market for raw time series. In general,
planners,
architects and scientists are the key customers for this sector.
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