Best Poster Award in Swiss Photovoltaic Conference 2023

Short Summary

• Irradiance sensors to measure received solar resources are not widely used in residential (or commercial/industrial) installations. For larger systems, these sensors are frequently reported to lack maintenance or regular recalibrations. Data from local meteorological ground stations are valuable and accurate since the instruments are usually well-maintained, but they are sparsely distributed and hence not a suitable data source for many PV systems.

• For these reasons, PV systems' short- and long-term performances have often been analyzed using satellite-derived insolation data. Despite the fact that higher uncertainties are associated with satellite-derived insolation data, no studies have been conducted to quantify this impact when assessing PV plant's performance ratio.

This work quantifies the accuracy of satellite-derived insolation (open-source and paid service) and then understands the impact of satellite-derived insolation data on the accuracy of PR estimates. In order to do that, ground-measured insolation data and PR time series computed using ground-mounted sensors are used as benchmarks.